INDIANAPOLIS---The NCAA Division I Board of Directors continues to move toward implementation of the Association’s academic reform package, a series of measures designed to improve the academic performance of student-athletes and teams.

During its meeting at the NCAA national office, the Board of Directors heard a report from the NCAA Committee on Academic Performance (CAP), which is reviewing data collected from NCAA Division I institutions.

The committee, known as CAP, is expected to submit to the board in January a formal recommendation for a cutline of academic progress that sports teams would have to remain above or be subject to contemporaneous penalties.

“Last spring, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors approved the academic reform package. Now the board is in the process of implementing academic reform and how to apply the contemporaneous penalties,” said NCAA President Myles Brand.  “The board had a very fruitful discussion today that will guide us in the future.”

Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford and chair of the CAP committee, stressed that the goals of the academic reform initiative are to strengthen educational performance of student-athletes and change behavior of poor-performing teams.

“We are trying to set reasonable expectations for teams for the academic success of their student-athletes,” Harrison said.

Known as the incentives/disincentives program, the academic reform initiative will penalize those athletics programs that fail to meet established requirements for educational progress.

An academic-progress rate, or APR, has been calculated for all Division I teams and includes all scholarship student-athletes entering an institution.  The APR is a measurement tool based on student-athlete eligibility plus student-athlete retention.

The NCAA has also established a graduation-success rate, or GSR, based on a six-year timeframe for graduation and including all scholarship student-athletes entering the institution.

The new graduation-success rate will differ from the federally calculated six-year graduation rate in that it will take into account student-athletes who transfer into and out of institutions in good academic standing.

The academic reform plan will include two types of penalties, contemporaneous and historical.  Contemporaneous penalties will begin in 2005-06, and they would result in the loss of a scholarship for one year for teams that fail to meet a standard that will be set in January, if a student-athlete on scholarship leaves school in poor academic standing.

Letters will be sent to institutions this academic year informing them how they would have fared under the new program based on last year’s academic performance.  The goal is to encourage them to take corrective action before contemporaneous penalties are applied.

Historical penalties will be assessed for academic failure over time.  These penalties may include scholarship reductions, recruiting limitations and ineligibility for NCAA team postseason or preseason competition, including bowl games and NCAA championships.  The most extreme cases could result in restricted membership status for the institution in the NCAA.  These penalties would begin in 2007-08. 

The incentives/disincentives program will require that institutions submit to the NCAA annual documentation measuring compliance with the academic-progress rate.

Final recommendations regarding penalties will be determined by CAP, with board approval, and provided to the NCAA membership before any teams would be subject to sanctions.

The new academic accountability requirements for NCAA institutions and teams build on new academic standards established last fall for student-athletes to ensure steady progress toward degree completion.  Those measures include requiring student-athletes to complete 40 percent of degree requirements by the end of their second year of college, 60 percent by the end of their third year and 80 percent by the end of year four.

In other action, the Board of Directors directed NCAA staff to review the Division I-A membership standards and report back to the board in January regarding the anticipated impact.  

These standards, which took effect in August, include a measure that average actual attendance for home football games must be 15,000.  Some NCAA Division I-A members have expressed concern about the attendance figure.

Institutions must meet the requirements to remain a Division I-A institution in the sport of football.  If a college or university does not meet the requirements in a given year, it will receive a notice letter.  If it does not meet the standards again at any time during a 10-year period, the institution will be placed in restricted status and not be eligible for postseason competition in football.

The Board of Directors also endorsed a series of enhancements for Division I-AA football.  These enhancements include a grant to enable televising all rounds of the Division I-AA playoff; a change in the Division I-AA championship seeding policy (only the top four teams are seeded); and a change in the date of the Division I-AA championship so that it can be played in prime time on the third Friday in December.

The Board also agreed that scheduling Division I-A opponents should be used for I-A home-schedule requirements and in counting for bowl eligibility.  The enhancements will require legislation or budget increases for possible implementation for the 2006 season.