NCAA Convention

The NCAA Convention is over so I thought I’d go through some of the proposals that were voted on. Keep in mind that QPR is currently playing so I’m going above and beyond here. We were down 2 nil but are now tied. If we give up a goal while I write this then I’ll blame this article and you’ll never read it.

The following is not a complete list. Just the ones I thought were interesting.

There was a resolution for a mental health hardship waiver that passed. It basically says that a hardship waiver process needs to be developed that distinguishes from physical injury.

Another resolution that passed will provide the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee one vote at the DIII Business Session.

There were a couple of resolutions dealing with committees and their makeup that all passed. All multi-sport DIII conferences will now either be represented on the Presidents or Management Council.

DIII will now require schools wanting to be a member to have a “bona fide invitation” from an active DIII conference before applying and they must keep that affiliation during their membership process. Most schools do this today but this will limit the number of independent schools.

One of the bigger resolutions was how to define a season. In the past, it was defined by the number of weeks but this is no longer the case. There will now be a start and end date defined. It will also increase the off season interaction allowed going from 16 to 24 days. There was a competing resolution on how to determine the season that was defeated.

There was a resolution that would allow student athletes to acclimate to the beginning of the season that failed. This one seemed silly to me but what do I know. It was probably meant to ease into the practice schedule and help injuries and mental health. To me, if you play 4-years of volleyball while going to school just means you were crazy to start with and you’ll have no shoulder or knees to speak of anyway. (That was a joke…sort of.)

For those that care, and none of you do, QPR tied their match. We have been horrible of late after leading the league a couple of months ago so this is a minor win in a sense.

Another resolution dealt with recruiting and allowing public social media communication starting January 1st with a prospective student-athlete in their senior year. It use to be May 1st. There are a lot of rules about recruiting and I really don’t know them all so no comment on this one.

That’s about it. I need to make it to one of these conventions one year. Everyone needs a little snark in these environments and I think I could fill that role.