Everything you need to know and more about 1-A football

[Carl Spackler]

I've yapped alot about the differences between 1-AA, and 1-A football in recent days - cost containment, John Toner, Joe Paterno....blah blah blah. The big east and how the confrence needs football.

This 1-A, 1-AA stuff has been ongoing since 1978. It was a big part of our decision to finally upgrade in 1999-2000.

For those that are interesting in exactly what the University of Connecticut is part of...as a 1-A member, now rather than 1-AA member for a little over 2 decades..read the following. This is part of a 1-AA, 1-A upgrade feasibility study from a university in Texas.

It's a long read, and it's full of info. Pay attention to how the schools that want to participate in division 1 athletics need to allocate football programs. Big thing to realize is that 1-A football is entirely about maintaining a minimum standard of athletic participation and scholarships in sports - which is BIG time money, and 1-AA football, has no minimum scholarships at all. 1-AA teams don't need ot provide scholarships, BUT - as of 2005, if they want to schedule games against the 1-A teams and make money, they need to invest in a minimum number of scholarships.

Money, money, money - always about money, and football has always been the driving force in intercollegiate athletics.



Part 1.

CURRENT AND POTENTIAL NCAA ISSUES

1. The Creation and Evolution of Division I-AA: All NCAA sports are important but football is the primary sport that distinguishes one college or university from another. In 1973 the NCAA separated its membership into Divisions I, II and III. Five years later the membership created Division I-AA, a new "cost containment" level of football, and each member institution was given five years to determine the level of football in which it wished to compete.
From 1980 until 1990, Division I-AA numbered approximately 60 members. In 1990, the NCAA membership voted to eliminate multi-divisional membership, thus forcing all Division I institutions to place their football programs in Division I. Since NCAA Division I-A, the highest level of football, had minimum standards and I-AA did not, the Division I schools who had previously sponsored Division III (non-scholarship) football programs were required to place those programs into I-AA in 1999; this swelled I-AA membership to 120. In 2005, there were 116 institutions competing for the Division I-AA Football Championship.
The championship teams from eight conferences receive automatic qualification to the Division I-AA Football Championship: Atlantic-10, Big Sky, Gateway, MEAC, Ohio Valley, Patriot League, Southern and Southland Conferences. Eight at-large teams are selected from the other members of the same eight conferences as well as from the remaining 49 institutions that compete in Division I-AA football outside of these conferences.
2. Major Developments Affecting I-AA and I-A: The advantages of cost-containment football have not been enough to bring stability to Division I-AA. The defection of successful Division I-AA football programs (e.g., Marshall University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University) to I-A has been common. Although reasons may vary, generally the driving force has been the attraction of playing in a higher classification of football and the resulting real or perceived credibility for the university. Such initiatives in today’s complex environment are taken at extreme risk unless the university has been guaranteed membership in a substantial I-A conference and thus has access to scheduling certainties, television appearances and revenues, plus bowl game opportunities and revenues.
During its January 2005 meeting, the Division I Board of Directors directed the NCAA staff, in consultation with the Division I Management Council and the Conference Commissioners Association, to draft legislation that would lead to an enhancement of Division I-AA football. Among the items that came out of this legislation were rule changes allowing Division I-A programs the use of one win each year against a Division I-AA opponent for Division I-A bowl eligibility and use of one game each year against a Division I-AA opponent to satisfy the five home-game scheduling requirement for Division I-A membership. This working group considered, but did not put forth legislation on the much-discussed idea to eliminate the Division I-A and I-AA subdivisions and instead recognize the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) eligible teams and NCAA championship eligible teams in Division I football.
3. The Bowl Championship Series: A distinction in Division I-A more significant than conference membership (but tied to it for all schools except Notre Dame) is that drawn by membership in the BCS, a voluntary arrangement for post-season play started in 1998 among the major conferences. It is neither controlled nor managed by the NCAA and its purpose is to deliver a Division I-A National Championship game.
The Rose Bowl, Nokia Sugar Bowl, FedEx Orange Bowl and the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl comprised the BCS bowls in January 2006. In January 2007, for the first time, the BCS will host an additional "National Championship Game" matching the top two teams in the final BCS standings. Under the BCS arrangement, six of the ten slots in these bowls are reserved for the champions of the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-10 and Southeastern Conferences. If a Division I-A team in a conference other than one of these six finishes the season ranked in the top 14 in the BCS standings, that team is eligible for one of the remaining at-large slots. As this explanation illustrates, every Division I-A team theoretically has the opportunity to compete in a BCS bowl game and to compete for the National Championship. The practical realities are much different.
The BCS bowls paid each competing team or the team's conference between $13.5 and $14.1 million last year. The remaining 24 bowls paid their participating teams between $750,000 and $5.2 million last year. Under the current BCS arrangement, last season the six BCS leagues collected $89.2 million among them, while the five Division I-A conferences whose champions are not guaranteed slots in a BCS bowl received a total of approximately $5.16 million combined for making their teams available to play in a BCS bowl game. In addition, eight Division I-AA conferences share approximately $1.8 million of revenue annually from the BCS arrangement even though their teams are not eligible to play in the BCS bowl games.
Despite the fact that a modest portion of the BCS money is shared with the non-BCS schools, the line of demarcation between the "haves" and "have nots" of Division I-A has been widened by the BCS arrangement and the continued, selective distribution of enormous revenues is making it more difficult for non-BCS I-A programs to compete not only in football but in all sports.​

C. NCAA DIVISION I-AA FOOTBALL REQUIREMENTS

There are minimum membership requirements that exist for all Division I institutions, regardless of football classification: 1. Sports sponsorship; 2. Contests and participation for each sport; and 3. Financial aid for the overall athletics program. An existing NCAA Division I institution adding Division I-AA football would need to ensure that it remained in compliance with these three requirements. With respect to these three requirements, there is no material difference between what is required of all Division I institutions and what is required of a Division I-AA institution, except that a Division I-AA institution must use football as one of its required 14 sport teams.
The process for a NCAA Division I-AAA institution to add the sport of Division I-AA football is quite simple. First, during the summer prior to the first year that the institution plays its first Division I-AA schedule the institution must indicate on its annual NCAA sports sponsorship form that it intends on sponsoring Division I-AA football. Then, the institution must comply with the scheduling requirements of Bylaws 20.9.3.3 and 20.9.7.2, which state that the institution must schedule and play a minimum of 9 football contests and that 50 percent of its total contests must be played against Division I-A or Division I-AA institutions. During the first year the institution satisfies this scheduling requirement, it is eligible to compete for the Division I-AA Football Championship. A Division I-AA football team is permitted to play a maximum of 11 regular season football contests most years and 12 games only when there are 14 regular-season Saturdays; this occurs in 2008, 2013, 2014 and 2019.
With respect to athletically related financial aid for football, Division I-AA has no minimum number of grants-in-aid and some I-AA institutions compete with no football scholarships versus other schools with similar policies. Division I-AA has an annual limit of 30 on the number of initial counters, an annual limit of 63 on the value of financial aid awards (equivalencies) to counters, and an annual limit of 85 on the total number of counters (including initial counters). These numbers are important because Division I-AA institutions that award an average of 90 percent of the permissible maximum number of 63 grants-in-aid per year to their football team over a rolling two-year period are more attractive for scheduling away "guarantee games" versus Division I-A opponents. Division I-AA institutions that meet the above scholarship criteria count as a Division I-A team for both home scheduling requirements and bowl eligibility for their Division I-A opponents.
It is also worth noting that each institution may employ a maximum of 11 coaches in Division I-AA football. According to NCAA Bylaw 11.7.3, these coaches may include one head coach and any combination of assistant and graduate assistant coaches.
NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship:
The Division I-AA Football Championship includes a field of 16 teams. Eight conferences (including the Southland) were granted automatic qualification for the 2005 championship and the remaining eight teams were selected at-large by the Division I-AA Football Committee, which applies the following principles when selecting at- large teams:

• The committee shall select the best teams available on a national at-large basis to complete the bracket;

• There is no limit to the number of teams the committee may select from one conference;

• The won-lost record of a team will be scrutinized to determine a team’s strength of schedule; however, less than seven Division I wins may place a team in jeopardy of not being selected; and

• The committee may give more consideration to those teams that have played all Division I opponents.

• The playoff begins the fourth Saturday in November on the campus of the higher seeded team and continues each week until the championship game is played on the third weekend of December at a predetermined site.

 

[Carl Spackler]

Part 2.

D. NCAA DIVISION I-A FOOTBALL REQUIREMENTS

NCAA Division I-A football teams are committed to intercollegiate football competition at the highest amateur level possible. To maintain this high level of competition, Division I-A membership requirements are much greater than the general Division I requirements that apply to I-AAA and I-AA institutions. These differences can be found in three general categories: level of competition in football, resource allocation and required showing of public support.

1. Level of Competition in Football: Division I-A institutions are required to play 60 percent of their football games against Division I-A institutions and to play a minimum of 5 home games against Division I-A institutions. In June 2005, the Division I Board of Directors adopted a proposal that permits a Division I-A institution to count one contest against a Division I-AA opponent to satisfy the home scheduling requirement, provided the Division I-AA opponent has averaged 90 percent of the permissible maximum number of grants-in-aid per year in Division I-AA football over a rolling two-year period. This new rule has an August 1, 2006 effective date. The maximum number of contests that a Division I-A institution can compete in is 12 beginning with the 2006-07 academic year.
In addition to these scheduling requirements, Division I-A institutions must also provide an average of 90 percent of the permissible maximum grants-in-aid in football per year over a rolling two-year average. Currently, the maximum number of grants-in-aid in Division I-A football is 85 full scholarships. Thus, a Division I-A institution must award an average of 76.5 scholarships over a rolling two-year period. In contrast, Division I-AA institutions are not required to provide any scholarships to their football student-athletes to remain a Division I-AA institution. This stark contrast illustrates the emphasis Division I-A institutions place on the level of competition in football.
Each institution may employ a maximum of 12 coaches in Division I-A football. According to NCAA Bylaw 11.7.2, this limit includes one head coach, nine assistant coaches and 2 graduate assistant coaches.
2. Resource Allocation: Division I-A institutions must annually offer at least 200 grants-in-aid or spend at least $4 million in athletically related aid to counters. In contrast, Division I-AA and Division I-AAA institutions could provide as little as 77 full grants-in-aid and remain in compliance with the Division I financial aid requirements. In addition, Division I-A institutions must sponsor 16 sports compared to a minimum of 14 sports in Division I-AA and Division I-AAA. These requirements to sponsor additional sports and to fund these sports at a high level are designed to ensure that Division I-A institutions allocate meaningful resources to their entire athletics program.
3. Public Support: Public support, measured by attendance at home football games, is a requirement unique to Division I-A institutions. Prior to 2004, NCAA legislation required an institution that played their home games in a stadium that contained a minimum of 30,000 permanent seats to average more than 17,000 in paid attendance per home game for one year in the immediate past four year period. An institution that played its games in a stadium that contained less than 30,000 permanent seats was required to average 17,000 in paid attendance for every home game for each of the preceding four years.
Beginning August 1, 2004, institutions were required to show the necessary degree of public support by averaging 15,000 in actual attendance (as opposed to paid attendance) each year. There was philosophical disagreement among Division I-A institutions as to whether or not public support measured by attendance at home football games is an appropriate criteria for determining an institution’s Division I-A status. Another concern was that linking Division I-A membership status to actual attendance was linking an important institutional identity to something outside the control of the institution.
In response to these concerns, the Division I Board of Directors adopted Proposal 2005-20, with an August 1, 2005 effective date. This rule requires that Division I-A institutions annually average at least 15,000 in actual or paid attendance for all home football contests once every two years. This new rule reinforced the philosophy that public support is an important component of Division I-A membership: it also provided relief from the 2004 attendance requirements and continued to distinguish Division I-A institutions from the less rigorous membership requirements to field a Division I-AA football team.
4. Penalties for Failure to Comply with Requirements: It is important to note that there are no waivers to the Division I-A membership requirements discussed above. An institution that fails to satisfy any of these requirements will receive written notice of such non-compliance. Another failure to comply with these requirements within a 10-year period would result in the institution being placed in a one-year restrictive membership status, during which time its football team will not be eligible for post season competition. If the institution does not meet Division I-A requirements after this one-year period, it can still continue to be a Division I member in sports other than football as long as it satisfies the general Division I membership requirements. Once a Division I-A member loses its Division I-A status, it must work through the two-year multi-division classification process to regain its Division I-A status.
During the April 2006 NCAA Management Council meeting, the membership subcommittee discussed the possibility of providing relief from the Division I-A football attendance requirements for the University of Houston and Rice University. Both institutions failed to satisfy an average of 15,000 in actual or paid attendance for their 2005 home games, in part due to the effects of multiple hurricanes in their geographic region. The subcommittee noted that no waiver provisions exist from the Division I-A membership requirements, and that both institutions can remain in compliance with Division I-A membership requirements by satisfying the football attendance requirements during the 2006-07 Academic Year.
5. Eligibility for Post-Season Play: A Division I-A football team must win a minimum of six games against Division I-A competition. A team that is 6-6 is eligible to play in bowl games beginning with the 2006-07 Academic Year, provided the team is a member of a conference that has an existing contractual affiliation with the sponsoring bowl organization. In terms of number of wins for bowl eligibility, there is an exception that allows a Division I-A institution to count one victory against a Division I-AA opponent, provided the Division I-AA opponent has averaged 90 percent of the permissible maximum number of grants-in-aid per year in Division I-AA football over a rolling two-year period.
6. Summary of Division I-A Membership Requirements:
The following is a summary of the Division I-A membership requirements discussed above:

• Sponsor a minimum of 16 varsity sports, including football, based on the minimum sports sponsorship and scheduling requirements set forth in Bylaw 20. Sponsorship shall include a minimum of six sports involving all male teams or mixed teams and a minimum of eight sports involving all female teams.

• Schedule and play at least 60 percent of its football contests against members of Division I-A and play at least 5 home games against Division I-A opponents. One Division I-AA opponent can be used to satisfy the home game requirement provided certain criteria are met.

• Annually average at least 15,000 in actual or paid attendance for all home football contests once every two years.
• Provide an average of at least 90 percent of the permissible maximum number of overall football grants-in-aid per year over a rolling two-year period.

• Annually offer a minimum of 200 athletics grants-in-aid or expend at least four million dollars on grants-in-aid to student-athletes in the athletics program.

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

Carl - you are on crack if you think I'm gonna read that entire post.

Bring back the character limit!

 

[CTMike]

Carl - you are on crack if you think I'm gonna read that entire post.

Bring back the character limit!

lol!

 

[Carl Spackler]

Print it out and read it when you're in the head.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Delaware could qualify as a D1A school with a schedule upgrade

 

[Carl Spackler]

Delaware, great example.

Delaware is another former division 1 football program that went cost-containment 1-AA because they didn't have the facilities to meet minimum "Public Support" criteria that was established for 1-A programs. BS.

The landscape of intercollegiate athletics is due for another major earthquake sometime in the near future. The experiemtn that was the 1-AA, 1-A split is not working.

UConn -as when Toner was the AD, is right in the middle of it all again, being one of the only major college/current BCS programs to show that making the 1-AA cost containment decision 22 years ago, was not as smart as making the 1-A spending decision.

I hope that whoever the next AD at UConn turns out to be, that they study the history of this university athletic department in great detail, because never is it more true, that if you don't learn from your mistakes, you'll be bound to repeat them, than it is with the UConn athletic department.

1-AA as a division of intercollegiate athletics, is not becoming more financially stable as it was predicted to be, and the gap between 1-A, and the rest of the intercollegiate world just continues to grow.

And what I mean by that, earthquake...... has absolutely nothing to do with the conference realignment crap that's primarly been driven by television, and ESPN and the BCS leadership capitalizing hugely on a sport that has no true post season play off. However the conference lineups look in 10-20 years is irrelevant.

The business of intercollegiate athletics is wha tis going to get shaken up, and that means the BCS. There's no reason to lump everybody back together, there are definitely finanical reasons for maintaining multiple divisions of competition in college football, based on revenue streams and athletic scholarships. It just needs to be reorganized, and restricted to operating budgets only.

THe "public support" aspect of 1-A football that Joe Paterno was instrumental in getting instituted in the late 1970s, baseically in a selfish effort to eliminate recruiting competition at the level that Penn State competed at, needs to get scrapped.

College football absolutely needs a true playoff system among conference champions though, at each level of competition. It's the only way to stop the ever widening gap.

Invitation bowl games can absolutely co-exist with a playoff system for conference champions,a nd should. By eliminating the guaranteed ticket sales, and creating a playoff system, the revenue gap will close, and the competition nationwide will get better.

The first thing that needs to go is the guaranteed ticket sales to bowl games. Once that goes, everythign will line up and fall in place.

But it's all got to do with the very real money that is SPENT by colleges in intercollegiate athletics....athletic departments and their operating budgets around athletic scholarships to maintain division 1-A status.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

I think UD would have recieved a waiver on the stadium size because of their attendance figures.(>17k)

 

[Carl Spackler]

I think UD would have recieved a waiver on the stadium size because of their attendance figures.(>17k)

It's not the stadium size that's the big issue anymore, although it was early on. It's all tied to attendance figures now, and I don't think it's ever actually been enforced, and any program has ever lost 1-A status because of it.

It became really clear very quickly, that what had been done by tying 1-A status to seating capacity was completely ridiculous in the early 1980s, and the NCAA has been dancing around it since, but it served it's purpose in the late 70s for the guy leading the charge in State College, PA.

The issue that schools face is funding the numbers of scholarships. If you read all the way to the bottom, to be division 1-A, not only do you need to maintain an average of 76 scholarships over a two year period for football, you need to fund at least 200 other scholarships/grants/aid for athletics OR less than 200, but at least $4million dollars per year.

How do you do that? You need to have an athletic department that has the infrastructure to do it and most importantly - to all of it - SCHEDULING.

That's what the ESPN/BCS money era driving realignment right now is missing, scheduling. It's the difficulty that te people in the ACC and SEC and Big 12 and even big 10/pac10 are dealing with right now trying to sort out after this period of conference shifting. How are all these conference games going to end up on TV and not over run each other?

It's also the thing that the Big East has very carefully been looking at for the health of everybody's athletic departments. They've got plenty of experience dealing with scheduling issues due to so much flux in the conference over the years.

 

[SAMCRO]

UD has great fan support/attendance, better than most of the MAC, and that's with playing Colonial/A10/YanCon teams every week. If they upgraded to play MAC or CUSA type schedule they would sell out the 25K seat stadium, and could easily expand to a 35+K seater and fill that as well.

Talk about a program with the potential to be relatively successful pretty quickly if they wanted to make the jump. They could tap into the Philly, NJ, and Maryland footprint recruiting wise. Give them some resources, and some time, they'd do just fine (and no, before anyone slams this, I am not endorsing Delaware to the BE right now). If the DuPont's were rabid college football fans, and wanted to see a big time college football atmosphere in Dover, they could throw some SERIOUS cheddar against it, UD wold be a fast riser.

 

[UCFBfan]

Invitation bowl games can absolutely co-exist with a playoff system for conference champions,a nd should. By eliminating the guaranteed ticket sales, and creating a playoff system, the revenue gap will close, and the competition nationwide will get better.

The first thing that needs to go is the guaranteed ticket sales to bowl games. Once that goes, everythign will line up and fall in place.

But it's all got to do with the very real money that is SPENT by colleges in intercollegiate athletics....athletic departments and their operating budgets around athletic scholarships to maintain division 1-A status.

Ahhh...but don't forget the reason these ticket sales are in place....money. Until greed disappears, a lot of the common sense changes that you mentioned will not occur. These bowls are not here for anyones' enjoyment but rather for a few individuals to stuff their fat pockets. The case of the Fiesta Bowl CEO is Case in point. The BCS will never go away in lieu of a playoff because there are two many people invested in the current system.

In adding to your point of a major shakeup. I can see that happening in the future with the major programs, UConn NOT being one of them, being left in a lesser division while the SEC, Pac-12, B1G, Big-12, and maybe some ACC schools, being put in a division where are the real money is spent. ESPN and other TV media outlets would love to have it be more elite and by eliminating half of the current 120 (I think that's the number for next season) FBS programs, they can do just that.

I wouldn't be shocked to see a new version of D-1A sports evolve from the haves and the have nots. Unfortunately, I don't see UConn in that boat and that ramification effects EVERY sport.

 

[whaler11]

Why would anyone who is a UConn fan want any more sharks in a very shallow talent pond. Delaware can go to hell.

 

[whaler11]

Those rules are all fine and dandy. Does any MAC team really meet the attendance requirements, Eastern Michigan doesn't get 17k for entire seasons.