Kind of an odd story that didn’t happen during last week’s NCAA Division I Board of Directors meeting. You know, the meeting that got rid of the requirement to have a winning record to make a bowl game. Instead you just need to break even.
Division I-AA football schools have gotten sick of being considered second banana schools. More importantly, they have found themselves in a recruiting disadvantage in other sports (basketball, baseball, etc.) where there are no such technical distinctions.
“We wanted to make I-AA a more attractive place to play by clarifying standards in I-A and enhancement in I-AA to provide both organizations with a better structure,” said Big Sky Conference commissioner Doug Fullerton. “The last piece is the I-AA enhancement. The early change was for semifinals on television on Friday and Saturday, where we traded the ability to seed all 16 teams in order to play regionally and save money for the NCAA in exchange for the television coverage.”
Along the way, Fullerton and other I-AA commissioners began to see a need for a change that would give their institutions a more positive football identity.
“A real concern about our name began to emerge,” Fullerton said. “There were two problems. One, I-AA likens itself to high school representation, like 1A, 2A, 5A type of designations. But the more critical problem was that it wasnt football specific, and people were calling us I-AA in all other sports. It hurt us in other sports as well, and it was really hammering us in our basketball recruiting. There were always subtle references to Division I football, with even our own coaches referring to I-A as Division I.”
Southland Conference Commissioner Tom Burnett saw problems for his institutions as well.
“Something that has been somewhat bothersome to me is that we are considered less than Division I,” Burnett said. “Were just as competitive as many teams in I-A and quite honestly we are recruiting a lot of the same players in our part of the country that I-A teams do, yet they are going out and telling recruits that we are Division II. Then our baseball and basketball get referred to as Division II as well.”
The solution. Change the name classification.
I-AA football is defined by its playoff system, and the word “playoffs” is sure to be in the new nomenclature for the I-AA classification, while the word “bowl” will highlight the new I-A designation. In its Jan. 6 meeting, the I-AA Governance Committee said that institutions that sponsor football should all be called “Division I Football” with the former subdivisions referred to as “Bowl Division” and “Playoff Division”. The terms “Playoff Championship Group” and “Bowl Championship Group” have been given as examples going into the Board of Directors meeting, though the name particulars are still up for debate.
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Fullerton said, “Were doing this in conjunction with I-A teams being comfortable with what we call ourselves and what they will call themselves. Were not trying to confuse anything or steal their thunder. We will all just be Division I football, with the Playoff Division and Playoff Championships for our postseason. The name itself is out of our hands though.”
The full Board of Directors, though, put it off likely for at least another year.
Barring a last-second miracle, the I-AA name remains for at least one more season, as the NCAA Division I Board of Directors decided Thursday to defer the change in nomenclature to another date. The Board deferred taking action to delete the subdivision labels in Division I until replacement labels are set. While the Board acknowledged that the wrongful use of labels can be a problem for I-AA teams, it could not take action with an absence of new nomenclature.
While the lack of action was a surprise for I-AA leaders, it was reluctance on the part of I-A presidents on the Board of Directors that put a halt to the name change.
“We were told on our Wednesday meeting with the NCAA that they hit on us being the Championship Division and were comfortable with it,” said Big Sky Commissioner Doug Fullerton. “Obviously the word wasn’t out there yet because the I-A Presidents pulled off of it.”
Fullerton believes there is a chance at quick movement if people only have to sign off on the nomenclature, though there would have to be work between the staff for the committees for both I-AA and I-A. However, he knows that at a certain point very soon the change has to be a year away. The next Board of Directors meeting will not be held until August 3.
“The major publications are going to bed right now, and the next big checkmark will be media guides in mid-June and the conference kickoffs in mid-July,” Fullerton said.
Ohio Valley Conference Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher also believes a name change will likely have to wait until the 2007-08 academic year, and feels that I-AA committees need to be clear about what the labels will be.
“We still have a governance process where we have to come up with identifying those sub-groups,” Steinbrecher said. “The way that we are going to re-name those sub-groups had clearly not been identified, and the board was not satisfied with that.”
I wonder where the Big East basketball schools fall on the issue? At first I thought they might support the name change thing, but I’m not so sure the more I think about it. There’s little confusion with them as far as the other sports go, due to their membership in the Big East. If anything, it probably gives schools like Villanova, Georgetown and Marquette a little extra advantage in recruiting for other sports versus the other I-AA teams. Especially against local teams in the area. They can point to a higher profile.
The Board of Directors did make one interesting change that will affect I-A football.
The Board approved legislation regarding the One-Time Transfer Exception that states that a player that transfers from I-A to I-AA can qualify for the exception (which allows players to play immediately without sitting out a season) only if they have two or more seasons of competition remaining. The legislation will go into effect on October 15.
Steinbrecher and Fullerton wanted to put an end to the practice of taking a transfer from a I-A school who only has one season of eligibility remaining.
“They are not transferring for academic reasons,” Fullerton said. “There’s a lot of information that those kids are not even going to school and are back at their home school by the end of the semester. Coaches can become addicted to this and it’s bad branding for I-AA when the major media outlets are only talking about I-A transfers in the playoffs.”
Most of the recent Pitt transfers to I-AA programs have been players with more than a year of eligibility left. Still this is an additional deterrent to players who get frustrated by losing a starting job, but does not have enough eligibility left to sit out a year.
