The Division I Council enacted temporary emergency measures to restrict midyear freshmen & transfer enrollees from competing in Spring '21 competition
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How Student-Athlete Health and Safety Considerations May Warrant a Second Look at a Recent Division I Council Action
Division I is pursuing fall sport playing season and championship options for Spring 2021
The Division I Council enacted temporary emergency measures to restrict midyear freshmen and transfer enrollees from competing in Spring 2021 competition
COVID-19 positives, contact tracing, opt-outs, and other variables impacting enrollment decisions cause roster attrition
Student-athlete health and safety and competition opportunities could be exigencies to revisit the Spring 2021 competition restriction for midyear enrollees
The beat goes on for Division I, particularly in regards to the continuous stream of necessary, temporary solutions and waivers designed to navigate the athletics framework during this unusual year. In the most recent example, the Division I Council earlier this month adopted temporary emergency legislation that impacts the ability for midyear enrollees -- freshmen or transfers -- to compete in spring 2021 during their initial full-time term of enrollment.
The two specific actions adopted by the Council read as follows:
Initial midyear enrollee football student-athletes are not eligible for competition in the 2020-21 academic year. Doing so promotes consistency with existing legislation that does not permit a freshman or midyear transfer enrollee to participate in postseason competition (i.e., bowl game) that occurs before or during the student-athlete's initial term of full-time enrollment at the school. This legislation applies to both Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision institutions and is effective immediately.
Initial midyear enrollee student-athletes in fall sports other than football are not eligible for competition in the 2020-21 academic year. In adopting this legislation, the Council noted the importance of maintaining consistent eligibility requirements among all fall sports.
The current Division I midyear competition eligibility rule specific to football holds that a midyear enrollee (freshman or transfer) is not eligible to participate in postseason competition that occurs before or during the student-athlete's initial term of full-time enrollment at the institution. The current iteration of the rule was adopted in June 2018 and the rationale behind it was that it is contrary to the intent of current legislation to allow a midyear football enrollee to participate in postseason competition that occurs prior to or during his first term of enrollment. The prior iteration of the rule focused more on restricting an institution’s ability to provide a football student-athlete enrolling midyear with any expenses (e.g., transportation, lodging, entertainment, incidental expenses etc) to participate in a postseason bowl game. Interestingly, the prior iteration created a subtle gray area, if not loophole, whereby, for example, a football student-athlete from Florida who enrolls midyear could out of their own pocket not only join up with the team at its bowl game location in Florida, but also suit up and, if certified to compete, potentially play. The 2018 legislative change ensured that scenario would not play out.
Specifically, the rationale underlying the restriction centers around a sense of competitive equity to deter bringing in new players solely for one postseason bowl game when the individual was not enrolled during the fall term regular season and never participated in pre-season training or regular season games. Further, it may not be responsible or sensible to have an incoming student-athlete with potentially no college football game experience to compete against bigger, faster, stronger competitors and burn one of their four seasons of competition by playing in one game.
Football is not the only sport with NCAA regulatory locks on the midyear enrollee competition eligibility door.
Other sports restrict freshmen and transfers from showing up in January and competing during the spring term. In baseball and men’s and women’s basketball, a student-athlete who initially enrolls at the certifying institution as a full-time student after the conclusion of the first term of the academic year and qualifies for an exception to the one-year residence requirement shall not be eligible for competition until the ensuing academic year.
There is more latitude for graduate baseball and basketball transfer student-athletes who initially enroll at the certifying institution as full-time students after the conclusion of the first term of the academic year and qualify for the one-time transfer exception. These student-athletes could be immediately eligible for competition, provided he or she satisfies all other applicable eligibility requirements.
The motive of creating a consistent standard across all fall sports for restricting midyears from competing in Spring 2021 does not necessarily match the legislative history in this area which only restricts student-athletes in football, baseball, and basketball. There have been attempts to rescind the legislative restrictions on these sport-specific midyear competition eligibility rules. For example, in 2005, a Division I proposal was sponsored to remove the restriction on midyear basketball freshmen enrollees from being eligible for competition in the spring term. The proposal was defeated, however.
In advocating to keep the midyear restriction for basketball back in 2005, the Division I Men’s Basketball Issues Committee at the time reaffirmed “there were legitimate reasons why the current rule is applicable only in the sport of basketball. The legislation was among a package of proposals designed to enhance the educational and cultural opportunities for current Division I basketball student-athletes so as to increase the likelihood of academic success and more fully prepare them to contribute to society as productive citizens. The proposal to require midyear transfers to forego competition and travel until the ensuing academic year should provide an appropriate time period for such student-athletes to acclimate academically and socially at the Division I institution. Further, it should reduce the pressure for coaches to recruit academically unsound transfer student-athletes in an attempt to provide a ‘quick fix’ to the current basketball season.”
In short, the rise of standing or temporary legislative restrictions on midyear enrollees being eligible to compete in Spring 2021 may be driven by competitive equity reasons, social and cultural acclimatization considerations and academic motives including deterring coaches from recruiting quick-fix midyear transfers who may not be academically prepared.
Yet, 2020 is so, well, 2020. Possibly one of the most unique years of our lifetimes. The arrows are pointing toward the possibility of Division I fall sports like volleyball, field hockey, women’s soccer, and men’s soccer having a semblance of a playing season as well as a Division I championship conducted by the NCAA this spring. The Division I Council’s recent actions to restrict midyear competition eligibility in the year of COVID may face unintended consequences and necessitate reconsideration for, as it turns out, health and safety reasons as well as student-athlete opportunity.
The first few weeks of fall sports competition this September have included ebbs and flows due to COVID positives and contact tracing that result in student-athletes needing to sit out for 10 or more days. These testing, contact tracing, and quarantine realities siphon the depth of a team’s roster without notice and, in some cases, on the same day of scheduled competition. Before the fall 2020 sports seasons started, Division I rosters were encountering attrition when some student-athletes “opted out” and decided to take the semester or full academic year off from practice and competition before possibly returning to their institution.
It is conceivable that fall sport rosters may shrink by the time January rolls around due to COVID positives, opt outs, senior student-athletes graduating midyear and opting not to return, as well as student-athletes in certain sports pursuing professional sport opportunities. A men’s soccer team with a roster of 25 student-athletes, for example, could be down to 10 to 12 by December when you take into consideration these variables as well as the Major League Soccer (MLS) Draft in winter and related professional opportunities. Restricting Division I teams from bringing in additional depth midyear with the opportunity to compete in the spring may be an invitation for a spike in NCAA waiver requests (of this midyear enrollee restriction) that correspond with a spike in COVID positives.
These variables could be sketched as falling dominos. If one fall team’s roster depletes to the point it can’t safely field a team, it will postpone or cancel games. In turn, other teams’ seasons are adversely impacted and so on. This contraction of available teams could undermine proposed fall sport championships being held in Spring 2021 because the pool of available teams is low.
Additionally, there has been a trend of more freshmen student-athletes graduating early from high school and opting to enroll in college during the spring term as true freshmen. And with the many uncertainties entering a student-athlete’s individual life circumstances, there are transfer student-athletes with strong academic credentials and valid reasons (e.g., moving closer to home to help family during COVID) to seek to move on at mid-year and compete for a new school in the spring.
This harder line by the Division I Council could induce difficult decisions for both coaches and administrators on whether to play and risk the health and safety of student-athletes when the roster is half-full.
There are a few paths to resolve this potential roadblock. It is possible the Division I Council revisits the impact and potential unintended consequences of the midyear enrollee restrictions and amend those decisions. Alternatively, the NCAA national office could extend Division I institutions and incoming student-athletes flexibility to compete this spring through waivers of these NCAA rules. It is also possible a subset---namely graduate transfers who transfer midyear---could be automatically eligible in the spring to compete for a new school.
For the macro benefit of all these fall sports, a more accessible solution to enable midyear enrollee competition eligibility for Spring 2021 could be in the interest of all stakeholders -- especially on behalf of Division I student-athletes’ health and safety and, assuming the pandemic landscape allows for it this spring, their opportunity to compete in a year when positive outcomes have been few and far between.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
