The NCAA's Agents, Gambling, and Amateurism Activities group weighs in today with three new documents:
• Information about the 2010 Major League Soccer (MLS) Super Draft
• Information regarding the 2010 NFL Draft, tryouts and agents
• A memo about NFL Players Association rules about contract advisors or their representatives communicating with student-athletes who are not eligible for the NFL draft.
NAACConnect.com will be a one-stop shop for current members to share ideas, upload documents and discuss compliance topics and legislative proposals using this new interactive web tool.
The report of yesterday's Board of Directors meeting isn't out yet, but stories on the NCAA website capture the major developments:
• Presidents endorse game reduction in basketball
This story summarizes the actions taken by the Board on the final recommendations of the NCAA Basketball Academic Enhancement Group.
• Board approves basketball recruiting reforms
This item came up through some recommendations from AMA and the Basketball Focus Group in the Enforcement Department. They're important. If you haven't read and disseminated these yet, you might want to do so as soon as possible.
• The NCAA office will be expanding physically, a committee has been formed to oversee the search for a new NCAA president, and there's new leadership for both the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee.
We've updated our New for 2010 online quiz (on our Quizzes page) to include a few of the more relevant proposals adopted by the Legislative Council earlier this month. We'll keep updating that quiz as the 2009-10 legisaltive cycle progresses.
The Legislative Council held its October meeting and looked at all the pending legislation, the bulk of which it will consider in 2010. You can pick up a report and the four attachments at our Legislation page.
Attachment B is probably the most important of the four. The Legislative Council adopted 10 proposals as noncontroversial legislation. None of them is particularly earth-shattering even though just about all of them are effective immediately. The Board of Directors may review them at its meeting today, but it's unlikely to take any action with them.
They're good to know about because some of them might make your life just a little bit easier. Which is why we've updated our NCAA Manual Updates page for your reading pleasure.
An addendum to the first dead period reminder issued yesterday (and since updated): Fencing coaches may observe prospects participating in the North American Cup B Fencing Championship on November 9, per NCAA 30.10.10.1.2. For the sleuth in you, it looks like Proposal 2009-3 was adopted for just this very event.
The NLI's early signing window is approaching, and so is the dead period that surrounds the initial day of the signing period. Pick up a reminder and distribute it to your coaching staff to help prevent violations.
The Pac-10 voted to sponsor several NCAA legislative proposals. Here's an update on their status.
• 2009-13 allows track and field volunteer coaches to place and receive telephone calls involving prospects. The Legislative Council preliminarily opposes it.
• 2009-26 allows unofficial visits to occur during dead periods if a prospect has signed a NLI.
• 2009-32 would permit unlimited telephone calls to prospects during contact periods in all sports.
• 2009-41 would eliminate printing of any athletics department publication except game programs.
• 2009-43 would allow electronically transmitted correspondence with prospects beginning May 1 of the prospect's senior year of high school once a financial deposit has been received by the institution. The Legislative Council preliminarily supports it.
• 2009-73 pretty much precludes lodging student-athletes at a hotel the night before a home game. The Pac-10 voted in October to withdraw it.
• 2009-82 limits the number of women's rowers who can compete on an outside team foreign tour. The legislation originally limited this number to no more than 2; in October, we modified the proposal to raise the limit to no more than 4.
• 2009-87, which precludes institutional or conference foreign tours, has been withdrawn.
The Pac-10 also voted to sponsor legislation to count non-traditional segment competition against traditional segment limits, but withdrew it before publication of the POPL.
The NCAA Eligibility Center's membership portal is available through LSDBi. The portal provides institutions better Institutional Request List (IRL) management; it also offers institutions and conference offices enhanced searching and reporting capabilities to prospects on an IRL.
The Eligibility Center will host a webinar Wednesday, November 4 from 4 to 5 p.m. Eastern time.
The weblink: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/vcc/join?id=w9824968&role=attend&pw=A982496
Audio dial-in number: 800/765-0709 • Passcode: 9824968
And you can save yourself some trouble and download this event to your calendar.
A new staff interp:
Six-Hour Requirement For Eligible Student-Athletes Who Transfer During an Academic Term (I)
Date Published: October 7, 2009
The academic and membership affairs staff determined that a student-athlete who transfers to the certifying institution during the same regular academic term in which he or she was enrolled full time at the previous institution (e.g., fall semester to fall semester or quarter) is not required, upon transfer, to have completed six hours of academic credit during the same regular academic term at the previous institution. [References: NCAA Division I Bylaws 14.4.3.1 (fulfillment of credit-hour requirements), 14.4.3.1.2 (transfer), 14.4.3.1.2.1 (six-hour requirement for transfer), 14.4.3.1.5 (additional application of six-hour and transfer rules -- baseball), 14.5.4 (two-year college transfers), 14.5.5.2.10 (one-time transfer exception) and staff interpretation (01/02/1991, item a), that has been archived.]
The new EdCol touches on a number of ways coaches can communicate with prospects via social networks, but the key bit of info is near the bottom:
"Accordingly, although it is permissible for a prospective student-athlete's name and/or picture to appear on an athletics department staff member's profile page of a social networking Web site to identify the prospective student-athlete as a "friend" of the athletics department staff member, staff members may not initiate or accept such requests until such time that it is permissible to send electronically transmitted correspondence to a prospective student-athlete."
So if a coach sends a friend request to a prospect and that request generates an email, the PSA better be old enough to receive it.
The NLI folks and the Eligibility Center will host a webcast on October 7 to run through the changes to the process for generating NLIs. The details:
Time: 4 to 5 p.m. Eastern time
URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/vcc/join?id=w9340942&role=attend&pw=A934094
Audio dial-in number: 888/503-8171 • Passcode: 9340942
To save you the trouble, you can download this event to your calendar.
