Monday's Vote on Extra Eligibility for Spring, and Possibly Winter Student-Athletes Not Automatic

On Monday the NCAA Division I Council will vote on a recommendation from the Division I Council Coordination Committee to reward spring student-athletes that missed their season with extra eligibility. It is no rubber stamp.

STILLWATER -- Back on March 12, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the NCAA cancel the biggest money maker in their calendar with the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament and simultaneously all other winter championships yet to be played like Division I wrestling and gymnastics as well as all spring sports championships including both men's and women's College World Series, golf, track and field, and the men's and women's Division I Tennis Championships in Stillwater. The wheels hardly ever turn so quickly at the collegiate sports level, but the next day, March 13, NCAA Division I Council Coordination Committee (I have to admit I didn't know there was one) agreed that it was appropriate to grant student-athletes in the spring that would miss an entire season relief of another year of eligibility. That suggestion went out in memo to member schools. Monday, March 30, the Division I Council will vote on that recommendation. 

"I could capably argue either side of it," Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said immediately in answering where he stood on the issue. 

Bowlsby is a veteran of college politics. He's been an athletic director at Northern Iowa, Iowa, and Stanford. He's been a student-athlete as a wrestler at Moorhead State, now Minnesota State-Moorhead. He's been on numerous NCAA committees, including serving as chair of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament Selection Committee. In the Big 12 he has had to withstand the constant politics of bluebloods Texas and Oklahoma. 

If Bowlsby is uncertain, then this issue has traps. 

"Pursuant to my earlier comments of not getting to compete in your senior year, I think anyone would have empathy for any of the student-athletes that have worked so hard and didn't get the opportunity," Bowlsby continued. "Now, there is a case to be made for winter sports athletes that did not get to finish their season. They may have finished the regular season, but I came up as a college wrestler and the opportunity to wrestle in the Division I Championships at the end of the year is the pinnacle of the opportunity to compete."

Bowlsby is now making a case for both the spring and the winter student-athletes getting another year. Some say that it can't just be the seniors, and that all classes should have a year added, even those athletes that previously used a red-shirt. 

Now, you can start adding up the cost of all those extra years of scholarships with tuition, books, fees, room, board, and cost of attendance stipend. That amount added to each of these schools that right now know roughly how much they are going to lose in revenue for this school year, but with an uncertain future and hopes (for the Power Five and Group of Five schools) to have a football season next fall. That is the sport that we all know and Bowlsby emphasized in his March 26 teleconference is the driver financially and popularity for all of big-time college athletics.

Most financial experts will tell you adding a huge cost to your business in a time of uncertainty, especially with regards to revenue is not a sound business decision. 

Division II has already voted to grant it's athlete's another year of eligibility, but the costs at Division II are not near the same of the costs at Division I. 

"I will tell you what concerns me the most is that with our current situation that we might find ourselves with an interruption in the fall or the winter with a rebound of the cornoavirus," Bowlsby said. We are being told that it (coronavirus) is going to be around for awhile and around for awhile without a vaccine."

That is very sound thinking and reason to give pause. What is going on and costing these student-athletes a season of competition and the rest of us the normal freedoms and opportunities in our daily lives is an act of God. The NCAA, the schools, administrators, conferences, anybody associated with the process or the organization of major college athletics has any control over.

I'm almost always pro athlete. I was for the cost of attendance stipend. I can't say that I am totally on board with name, image, and likeness. Sometimes, I think student-athletes don't look around at fellow students that work their way through school using student loans they will spend years paying off realize how much that scholarship is worth along with the supplies, opportunities, living conditions, and coaching that they get. 

The cost is substantial. I'd like to see them all get another year, but before committing to that it might be smart to wait and see when the cause of all this will be under control. I know for sure that it won't be by Monday, March 30.   

Publisher's Pick: Check out this story from Sports Illustrated on how the NCAA is warning schools not to violate the current recruiting restrictions during the COVID-19 pick.