A memo from the NCAA: what could it mean for the Pilots?

So this has been floating around the internet the past couple days. It's a set of proposals the NCAA is going to look at to reduce costs:

http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/DI_Champs_Sports_Mgmt_Cab/2010/February%202010/Supp_5_Cover_Sheet_Bylaw%2017%20and%2031%20Review.pdf

Now, the reason it's become public is what it says about March Madness; more on that later if you care about that. There are a couple items I found interesting with regard to Pilot soccer and how we have been shipped to the middle of nowhere despite having a high seed. First, on page 2, under Travel Costs, we have:

Increase travel mileage to 400 for all sports, but with some common sense exceptions (e.g., 422 miles).

This might refer to the limit at which the NCAA will allow for air travel. If it is, and we need at least one school close enough to drive in order to host the opening weekend of the tournament, this could help. I'm not too sure offhand who is just outside the current 350 mile limit.

I was also curious about Item 1 in that section, a proposal to eliminate overnight travel and missed class time for "nonchampionship segments," but I don't know what exactly nonchampionship segments are. If that's the regular season, that would be insane, so I don't think it's that.

The other part I found interesting is on page 3, under Revenue Generation. I added the emphasis below:

Evaluate criteria for determining sites, not just reduce flights but weigh that against possibility of generating revenue.

This one really jumps out at me and no doubt a few of you. It seems every year we got sent away for the first weekend a bunch of us would say, "If only the NCAA allowed the committee to take into consideration the fact that the Pilots could play the first two rounds in front of 4000 fans at Merlo versus 400 at some BCS school in the middle of the country. Oh well." There is that part about reducing flights, though. We will have to see how this works itself out.

As you might expect, the reason this whole paper surfaced in blogs is revenue generating idea #2. It was a rumor for a year or two and now it seems to be closer to reality. But this is the soccer forum.

It is important to note these are just proposals and the document says just that. But on page 1 you will note that the NCAA cabinet is going to discuss these at its meeting this month, and the NCAA would like the ones that are adopted to be in place this fall. Stay tuned...

The process of evaluating costs has been going on for quite a while and most of this has been part of the previous discussions.

Regarding the 350-mile rule vs a 400 mile rule, Division I Women's Soccer has used the 400 miles since the 2008 season and is expected to continue using it. The change to 400 miles potentially helps the Pilots, because Washington State fits within the 400 miles but not the 350 miles. It doesn't help for opening round games, however, if Washington State gets seeded.

The reference to nonchampionship segments in relation to length of season, number of contests, and travel costs all is to what we have called "pre-season" contests, meaning the Spring games and the early August non-counting games that some teams play. The NCAA is entertaining rules for those games aimed at helping the colleges save money. I think Purplegeezer knows the details of what this is about, at least in terms of what the current rule is.

Overall, what this is part of is establishing rules everyone must follow in areas in which some schools would like to have limitations in order to save money but feel forced into doing whatever their rival schools are doing, at a greater cost.

Regarding "evaluate criteria for determining sites, not just reduce flights but weigh that against possibility of generating revenue," I have not seen that one before. This would be very good for the Pilots.

UPSoccerFanatic wrote: The reference to nonchampionship segments in relation to length of season, number of contests, and travel costs all is to what we have called "pre-season" contests, meaning the Spring games and the early August non-counting games that some teams play. The NCAA is entertaining rules for those games aimed at helping the colleges save money. I think Purplegeezer knows the details of what this is about, at least in terms of what the current rule is.

Okay, yes, Geezer recently mentioned changes to spring games in another thread.

Here's my breakdown on the proposals:

NCAA Championships/Sports Management Cabinet
Review of Bylaws 17 and 31
September 15-16, 2009, Meeting


Length of Season and Number of Contests.

1. Reduce contests in all nonchampionship segments.


3. Establish one number for total competitions (including traditional and nonchampionship
segments).

(1) is minor. right now all that is allowed in soccer is 5 dates, plus one national or approved international match, plus an alumnae game. How much could they drop? one game?

(2) doesn't really affect us, I don't think. What it means is that those conferences that have tournaments will have to schedule fewer contests in order to stay under the 20 game limit. conversely, they could add a game or two to accomodate tournaments, which mean we would actually be able to schedule that many more games. This could be a response to the Becky Burleigh -SEC proposal to change the tournament arrangement (bad for teams in the sparsely populated West) to suit the SEC tournament.

Travel Costs.

1. No overnight travel, no missed class time for nonchampionship segments.

2. Evaluate actual versus reimbursed expenses (e.g., per diem).

3. Increase travel mileage to 400 for all sports, but with some common sense exceptions
(e.g., 422 miles).

4. Review per diems (make consistent with IRS standards).

(1) we don't go overnight for spring ball anyway as far as I can remember, it's been all OR and WA teams or a national team training here anyway.

(2&4) sounds like an attempt to reduce per diems to students, especially during the tournament. It will no doubt make the NCAA budget go down and make Students lives more miserable unless schools make up the difference.

(3) is interesting. In addition to UPSF's comments, If it's in reference to the tournament pod determination, I doensn't mean we can add any teams unless they extend the limit to 436 miles instead of 422 miles mentioned as a reasonable exception to the list of possible local teams. Boise State is 436 miles away on the TES calculator. They will have to go by ground transportation, saving the NCAA a flight in some years. a distance of 436 miles changes everything - more so for the other Oregon schools. right now Oregon - Gonzaga isn't local. either is Oregon State -Gonzaga (Same with WSU and Idaho). at 436 miles, all those combinations are possible. Idaho state is out in limbo still, though.

If it is in reference to teams we can play in the non-conference schedule, I don't think it means anything. coupled with the proposal that teams can't stay overnight, it still eliminates distant teams as a spring ball candidates. It can't possibly be in student's interest to drive all night, play several scrimmages in a day (the usual current format for many teams) and then drive home all night.

Preseason.

2. Have CSMAS tell us what the reasonable time is to prepare for each sport.

3. Count preseason Sundays when calculating preseason practice opportunities.

4. Reduce to 18 the number of practice opportunities in all sports.

5. Consider eliminating travel to preseason practice.

6. Consider eliminating travel for practice during break.

(2) my guess is that the NCAA staff has already done that and the number of days of preseason is shorter.

(3) It means shortening preseason by 2 or 3 days of room and board. Schools will still have to schedule one rest day each week, so I don't think it actually affects the number of practices.

(4) there ya go- see 3. The current limit is 21 days.

(5) I see this as a hardship for team players who choose to go to a school far away. it won't affect the rich kids, just the ones on a budget. And it will affect teams in the West more, since distances are greater.

(6) I guess it means if you go home for break, it's on your own dime. see (5)

Student-Athletes’ Welfare.

1. Prohibit hotel accommodations on the night before home contests.

2. Evaluate the number of complimentary tickets student-athletes are permitted to receive
for NCAA championships.

3. Eliminate all exceptions to the 48/36 hour rule.

(1) who does that in non-revenue sports?

(2) Gotta get that $2.00 out of the kids at that Nebraska game. More seriously, it's probably aimed at making sure somebody like O.J. Mayo doesn't get 50 comped tickets to "distribute"

(3) there are exceptions? maybe it means Oregon State can't stay in Michigan and study instead of flying for 2 days.

Revenue Generation.

1. Evaluate criteria for determining sites, not just reduce flights but weigh that against
possibility of generating revenue.

2. Consider bracket expansion for men’s basketball (to generate more money).

(1) Finally! but of course, it won't apply to women's soccer. The BCS schools can't fill their stadiums now. UNC averaged under 1600 per game even though it's free. This provision is actually in the NCAA bylaws right now, but has been ignored by the competition committee since I can remember.

(2) duh!

Reduce National Office Cost.

1. NCAA, reduce hard copy printing (e.g., brochures).

2. Evaluate food provided to media at NCAA events.

3. Look at impact of reducing committee member per diem.

4. Evaluate the cost of “back of room operations” (e.g., cookies and drinks at NCAA
events).

(1,2,3,4) This will apply, of course, only to low level employees ( like ushers) and media. All the fat cats will still get their hospitality suites.

Officials’ Fees.

• Review officials’ fees and do not rely too heavily on market value. There is inherent
value in officiating NCAA championships.

It seems the NCAA should think about importing refs from outside their local areas to get neutral adjudication, and it should be paying going rate to do it. Cost saving to get local refs to work cheap can only hurt the tournament. Even now, there are questions about the fairness of referees doing a tournament game for a team with which the ref contracts during the year.

Principles to Consider.

1. Consider input from coaches.

2. Be cautious in reducing in-person meetings.

3. Do not reduce student-athlete opportunities (travel party).

[/quote]

(1,3) will, of course, be ignored.

(2) what does this mean - don't put anything in writing?

Great breakdown by the Geez. By the way, Geez, if you use the NCAA.0rg website to go to the agenda for the upcoming Competitions Cabinet meeting, one of the attachments is the new Handbook for the Cabinet. Among other things, there's a full description of how the voting works, with the weighting of votes based on conferences. It's a pretty good resource to have.

I agree wholeheartedly with the Geez about refs. They should receive full pay, and out-of-region refs should be brought in either for all NCAA Tournament games or at least for the quarters.

Regarding eliminating traveling for pre-season practice and for practice during breaks, I think what that is referring to is traveling to destinations away from the school. This is at least an issue for Spring sports, where schools from the northern areas sometimes take their teams south for practice. I imagine it could affect baseball and softball in particular.

Being a local referee, I know most of the guys (and gals) who do the UP games. I've found it striking that about the only times we see out-of-state referees are WCC games. For most of the non-conference games (including the big ones against UNC, UCLA, etc.) we have local referees. For the early rounds of the NCAA tournament we have local referees. Only for WCC matches is the center referee brought in from somewhere else (and the ARs are local always).

UPSoccerFanatic wrote:. By the way, Geez, if you use the NCAA.0rg website to go to the agenda for the upcoming Competitions Cabinet meeting, one of the attachments is the new Handbook for the Cabinet.

Do you have a link? the latest I see HERE is for feb 10.

I never have figured out how to navigate the NCAA sites, I mostly stumble around at random (which sometime yields interesting results)

[quote="Purplegeezer"]

UPSoccerFanatic wrote:
I never have figured out how to navigate the NCAA sites, I mostly stumble around at random (which sometime yields interesting results)

Neither have I, since they seem to change the layout every time I go to look something up.

Purplegeezer wrote:

UPSoccerFanatic wrote:. By the way, Geez, if you use the NCAA.0rg website to go to the agenda for the upcoming Competitions Cabinet meeting, one of the attachments is the new Handbook for the Cabinet.

Do you have a link? the latest I see HERE is for feb 10.

I never have figured out how to navigate the NCAA sites, I mostly stumble around at random (which sometime yields interesting results)

You were at the right spot. If you click on February 2010 Agenda, it takes you to the agenda for this month's Cabinet meeting. Then, within the agenda, there are links. Supplement 2 is the Cabinet Handbook. Here is its link: http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/DI_Champs_Sports_Mgmt_Cab/2010/February%202010/Policies%20and%20Procedures/Supp_2_POLS-PROCEDURES_10-13-10.pdf

Some time in March or April, they will post a report on this month's meeting. By then, at the latest, we should know if the Cabinet has taken any action. I do note that the agenda does not appear to have any issues addressing women's soccer specifically.

It's very unfortunate that although it has the capacity to do it, the NCAA does not publish any agendas for or reports from the Division I Women's Soccer Committee's meetings. This is where any decisions specific to women's soccer originate.