The "grandfather" rule the MAC was trying pass early this year was struck down by an NCAA committee without ever going to vote. Its dead. However, the MAC has another exception up its sleeve. Instead of providing paid tickets, or stadium size waviers, the MAC is attempting to change the 15k requirement from being mandatory once every two years, to once every four. Hopefully this one will pass.
2003-91 MEMBERSHIP -- DIVISION I-A MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS -- RESTRICTED MEMBERSHIP -- THREE-YEAR CONSECUTIVE PERIOD
Status: Management Council Initial Formal consideration Process Diagram
Intent: To specify that an institution that fails to satisfy any Division I-A membership requirement for three consecutive years will be placed in restricted membership status in football for one year and that failure to meet Division I-A membership requirements during the restricted year will result in the institution losing its Division I-A classification.
Bylaws: Amend 20.9.6 by adding new 20.9.6.6 , page 360 , as follows:
"20.9.6 Division I-A Football Requirements. An institution classified in Division I-A shall meet the additional requirements listed below.
[20.9.6.1 through 20.9.6.5 unchanged.]
"20.9.6.6 Noncompliance with Division I-A Criteria.
"20.9.6.6.1 Restricted Membership. An institution that fails to satisfy any of the Division I-A membership requirements set forth in Bylaw 20.9.6 for three consecutive years shall be placed in a restricted membership category for one year. While in restricted membership, the institution shall not be eligible for postseason football competition. At the conclusion of the one-year restricted period, an institution that fails to satisfy the Division I-A membership requirements shall lose its Division I-A classification."
Source: Mid-American Conference.
Effective Date: August 1, 2004
Proposal Category: Amendment
Topical Area: Membership/Legislative Process
Rationale: This proposal is offered as an alternative to Proposal No. 2002-93. Both proposals address an institution's failure to satisfy Division I-A membership requirements. This proposal is intended to develop a structure that will provide greater stability in terms of subdivisional membership within Division I, while still maintaining individual institutional compliance with the enhanced Division I-A criteria. A three-year time period for compliance, with reclassification in a fourth year, is a reasonable and moderating approach in comparison to the potential difficulties associated with a shorter and more volatile reclassification structure (i.e., two years) offered by Proposal No. 2002-93. Further, this proposal better addresses potential problems associated with "undefined" or "transitional" subdivision status of institutions that might be reclassified. Finally, this proposal is consistent with comparable time frames related either to previous Division I membership and/or penalties associated with potential infractions or administrative sanctions found elsewhere within the NCAA structure.
Estimated Budget Impact: Unspecified.
Impact on Student Athlete's Time: None.
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History Jul 14, 2003 Submit; Submitted for consideration.
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Typical MAC. 15K once every four years? Can someone please put us out of our misery? :rolleyes:
Typical Herd fan drivel. Any plans to fill those seats you added to your stadium anytime in the near future? I know, they seemed like a good idea at the time...
It's doomed to failure. It makes too much sense.
It's doomed because the BCS conferences want most of the MAC, Sun Belt, WAC and C-USA out of 1-A. My questions is who will they play for those early season tune up when they lose 15 schools to 1-AA due to these requirements? I hope that the Tulane Prez.'s group just cesedes from the NCAA over this stuff and forms their own association of like minded schools. F.. the NCAA!
Once again, this proposal should fail. 15k is not a large number. What some schools want, it seems, are the benefits of playing at the I-A level without the burdens.
The 15k rule does away with the old "paid attendance" standard. Instead, anyone who walks through the gates on game day is "in attendance." You get to count students, band members, ushers, concession workers, security, players, coaches, officials, media, and anyone else inside the confines of the stadium.
Instead of offering amendments, how about promoting the program? How about making the type of financial committment necessary to be competitive at the Division I-A level? Unfortunately, some MAC schools seem to be pinning their hopes on a proposed amendment rather than making concerted efforts to improve attendance. As my Armor Officer Advanced Course instructor was fond of saying: "hope is not an acceptable plan."
I am sick of groveling with our pitiful conference mates in this swill of apathy they call the MAC.
Bottom line is, MAC'sters, if you can't attract 15,000 for a home game on a consistent basis you don't need to be in IA. You need to be in IAA instead.
If the support isn't there ( obviously not ) then Kent, Akron, CMU, NIU, etc. need to go where they are better suited: IAA.
Maybe by cleaning house and getting rid of the deadbeats this could become a more respectable conference worthy of teams like Marshall and a couple of the others like Toledo and maybe UCF. Without us you all would be doomed and you know it.
BTW, are you guys gearing up for your yearly beatdowns ?
We have become bored stomping MAC as$es. If we stay in this pathetic league we will surely fall back into that bottomless sewer known as "in the MAC forever".
Please God let us out of this pitiful conference.
Kiss_My_Left_Sac Wrote:I am sick of groveling with our pitiful conference mates in this swill of apathy they call the MAC.
Bottom line is, MAC'sters, if you can't attract 15,000 for a home game on a consistent basis you don't need to be in IA. You need to be in IAA instead.
If the support isn't there ( obviously not ) then Kent, Akron, CMU, NIU, etc. need to go where they are better suited: IAA.
Maybe by cleaning house and getting rid of the deadbeats this could become a more respectable conference worthy of teams like Marshall and a couple of the others like Toledo and maybe UCF. Without us you all would be doomed and you know it.
BTW, are you guys gearing up for your yearly beatdowns ?
I hope that we never get bored stomping MAC ****** When we do we will surely fall back into that bottomless sewer known as "in the MAC forever".
Please God let us out of this pitiful conference.
[QUOTE]If the support isn't there ( obviously not ) then Kent, Akron, CMU, NIU, etc. need to go where they are better suited: IAA.
Maybe by cleaning house and getting rid of the deadbeats this could become a more respectable conference worthy of teams like Marshall and a couple of the others like Toledo and maybe UCF. Without us you all would be doomed and you know it.
BTW, are you guys gearing up for your yearly beatdowns ?
34-20. :snore:
Bowling Green has beaten BCS schools five times in a row. It's clear from what the Falcosn do on the field that they belong in Division I-A.
I don't see how 3,000 fewer people at each of our football games would invalidate that.
I maintain the whole Division I split is about greed, and unnecessary.
Why should it matter how many people show up if the university is willing to pay to be 1-A? Sponsor the number of required sports, etc. Attendance varies based on two things wins and weather. Neither are predictable and attendance shouldn't be the sole criteria for 1-A membership.
Marshall fans seem to conveniently forget when you couldn't draw 15K to your games when you consistently lost as well. Now that you lie, cheat and steal your way to titles you think that respectable schools and this conference should kiss your arse. Forget it... move on, we don't want you around.
Woo Hoo... you go Flash!!!! yeah, the only requirement to get into div 1a is the size of your stadium, irregardless of whether you fill it or not... should be changed... cause, attendance will vary year to year... depending on a lot of conditions...
Kiss_My_Left_Sac Wrote:If the support isn't there ( obviously not ) then Kent, Akron, CMU, NIU, etc. need to go where they are better suited: IAA.
So that loss to Akron last season must really hurt! After all, they should be in I-AA, right?
The 15K attendance rule should not be modified.
If you can't support your program to the level of 15K per game, you shouldn't be given the priviledge of competing on the highest level of college athletics. Frankly, those programs don't deserve the right to compete on the highest level and all they are doing is snatching up all the big money games away from mid-major teams who have proven a level of support worthy of division 1-A.
At one time Marshall was not able to attain the 15K minimum per season. Guess what the Herd competed at the I-AA level during those years! Marshall made a commitment to football by building a new stadium close to campus and investing time and effort to turn around a program that hadn't seen a winning season in more than 15 years. There is no reason that any school couldn't make the same commitment and see the same results. But instead of making a commitment and truly striving to be competitive and respectible it seems some of our conference members would rather try to 'lower' standards and have I-A membership given to them without making an effort or commitment of support. What a truly pathetic state of affairs we are in when we have to petition the NCAA to 'lower' the bar for our conference. And then folks wonder why programs such as Marshall and UCF desire residence in other conferences.....
I repeat:
Bowling Green has beaten BCS schools five times in a row. It's clear from what the Falcons do on the field that they belong in Division I-A.
I don't see how 3,000 fewer people at each of our football games would invalidate that.
I maintain the whole Division I split is about greed, and unnecessary.
Tell me how paying for 85 scholarships and improving and maintaining a 30K seat stadium for over two decades with only 2 winning seasons is not supporting D-1A status. If KSU didn't want to be 1-A, why are they adding back 3k in seats that they tore down last year. Why did they put in lights, new turf, and a new scoreboard over the last 10 years? Explain to me how KSU is not Supporting D1-A status.
Attendance is fickle and is not a just and sole benchmark for D1-A status. :mad:
Aren't college athletics supposed to be about the competition, not who shows up to watch? Athletics programs are supposed to exist for the athletes and the students as a whole, not "fans". I believe that's the founding principle of it anyway. This "business" stuff is contrary to the founding principle of why we have these sports to begin with it seems to me. Putting in qualifications that have nothing to do with a school's committment to the sports (# of sports offered, # of scholly's) just enhances the corruption of the system.
We don't run colleges and universities to turn a profit we run them to educate people in their chosen field, and athletic programs are supposed to be about the particpants primarily with a side-effect of generating attention. The attendance rule ran counter to the purpose of college athletics when it was passed, and anything that waters it down is ok by me- purist that I am.
and here's a link to the <a href='http://coalition.tulane.edu' target='_blank'>Presidential Coalition for Athletics Reform</a>. This is the Tulane group, the MAC representative on the executive committee is the NIU President John Peters. The coalition to take on the Big Money Conferences includes all of the "groveling members of this pitiful conference" including Marshall.
DogTracks Wrote:The coalition to take on the Big Money Conferences includes all of the "groveling members of this pitiful conference" including Marshall.
That's not true. Akron and EMU are not on board!
Wow... It is not so much that I agree with Flash and Dog Tracks... but having to agree with Schadenfreude from bowling green??
You know, when espn and the likes call the college football the minor leagues for the NFL? Is suck a crock... Probably about 1% of all players in div 1a go to the NFL the rest of them are there because they want to play the sport for their school, while getting an academic education. I believe college sports are a great positive for the school and the participants... as well as the fans... I used to attend the women's field hockey games with my roomate in the glass bowl.... he and I were the only two who attended... does that mean that the sport should be closed down? or that they were not worthy of div 1a stature? Those women were good
but, their level of play had nothing to do with their 2 man cheering section...
Quote:Attendance is fickle and is not a just and sole benchmark for D1-A status.
I agree that it shouldn't be the
sole benchmark and it isn't. But, there has to be some standard. There is a standard for the number of football scholarships offered. There is a standard for the number of sports offered. Attendance is only one component of the Division I-A standard.
What would you say if a school regularly had an average attendance of, say, 20,000 but said it couldn't afford to have 85 football scholarships? Should that school be at Division I-A? What if they can only afford to offer 10 sports? Should they be I-A? My point is that there has to be some kind of standard for playing at the top level. The new standard requires that you demonstrate both a financial committment from the university and that you demonstrate community support for the program.
As for Marshall's years of low attendance and losing seasons, I will be the first to admit that, when we were going 2-9 every year and drawing 8,000, we did not deserve to be in Division I-A. But, we started hiring good coaches. We added a full time recruiting coordinator. We engaged in large fund raising campaigns. It didn't turn around overnight. It took about 10 years of constant effort before Marshall was ready to move up to Division I-A.
Unfortunately, some schools have viewed their football programs with an attitude of benign neglect. They haven't improved their facilities. They haven't sought out coaching talent. They haven't hired full time recruiting coordinators. They haven't engaged in fund raising drives. In other words, they took the attitude of "let's build a 30,000 seat stadium and not worry about building the program."
P.S. NIU has done an excellent job of building its program over the last few years.
OK, I'll play along with this competitiveness line of thought.
So what would you have the NCAA do, open division I-A to any school who feels that they can be competitive? What standard would be used to determine competitiveness? How would you structure a post season from a pool of a few hundred programs? How would OOC scheduling be handled? Etc, Etc.
If you don't feel division I-A should be open to anyone and everyone, what is a more fair standard to use to determine which programs get placed in certain divisions?
Personally, I like the tiered division setup that exists today. It places programs into segments that are structured in a way that most teams within a each division/segment can compete on about the same level. Is there a better way than attendance to segregate these teams into division levels, perhaps. But if you look historically at attendance/support of division I-A programs there is a good correlation to competitiveness. Obviously the teams that are competitive are the ones who are able to build and maintain fan support, financial support and a continued, on-going high level of competitiveness. In addition, these are the teams that are attractive to the TV networks, which as we all know plays a major role in college football today.
So bottom line, attendance IMO is not a bad way to segregate teams b/c there is a general correlation between attendance and competitiveness. Obviously there are exceptions (ie teams that perform well with bad attendance and teams that perform poorly with good attendance), however, over the long run even these programs see a correlation amongst attendance and competitiveness.