Athletics Veritas is a weekly series aimed at helping higher education executives, faculty, and other stakeholders stay tuned in on trending national issues impacting college athletics, especially NCAA Division I. Athletics Veritas is created by senior DI athletic administrators around the nation.
How the ACC’s Proposed Micro Fall Schedule for Olympic Sports Could Lead to a New Version of “Moneyball"
Conferences like the ACC have forged ahead with a compressed fall sports schedule.
The ACC’s fall Olympic sports schedules align with the modified minimum contest limits set for 2020-21 by the NCAA.
Student-athletes, especially seniors, in fall sports may see the proposed season falling short of their student-athlete experience expectations.
Coaches and administrators will encounter a college sports version of “Moneyball” due to the need to resolve student-athlete by student-athlete redshirting decisions, roster size impacts, and returning for additional year scenarios.
Citing COVID-19 risks, student-athletes in various sports across Division I exploring the “opt out” option for 2020-21.
In this Athletics Veritas, we explore a few bigger picture and longer-term implications of the ACC’s announced Fall 2020 Olympic sport schedule and the COVID-19 realities that have student-athletes rethinking whether to participate this fall. Although several Division I conferences have postponed any fall sports competitions until Spring 2021 at the earliest, the ACC has forged ahead with its modified schedule for this fall. The ACC’s Olympic sports fall plan will run as follows:
Fall Olympic Sports competition may begin on Thursday, September 10
Team sports will play a conference schedule that meets the NCAA’s modified minimum amount of games: field hockey (6), women’s soccer (6), men’s soccer (6) and volleyball (10)
Schools will continue to schedule regular season cross country competitions at their discretion
Any additional games against conference opponents or non-conference opponents are at the respective school’s discretion, and all opponents must meet the ACC’s medical standards
Any additional games against conference opponents that are beyond the conference-mandated schedules would not count in the ACC standings
The schedule for ACC Fall Championships:
The cross country championships will be held at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, N.C. on October 30, and include all fifteen member schools
The field hockey championship will be held at Duke University on November 5, 6 and 8
The women’s soccer championship will include the top four teams and be held at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, N.C. on November 6 and 8, as previously announced
The men’s soccer championship will include the top four teams and be held at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, N.C. on November 13 and 15
Television selections via the ACC’s partnership with ESPN and ACC Network will be made in the future
Of particular note is the second bullet point above related to the number of contests the ACC scheduled as regular season conference competition for purposes of its conference member schools pursuing a Fall 2020 conference championship. The number of games in these respective sports actually reflect 50% of the Division I minimum contest requirements under the Division I membership requirements specified in Bylaw 20.9.6.3.
The reason 50% of sport minimum requirements appears to be the target mark from the ACC’s point of view for its Fall 2020 schedule is because the Division I Council Coordinate Committee (3C) decided on July 27, 2020, to approve a blanket waiver of the minimum contest requirements for the 2020-21 academic year in men's and women's cross country, men's and women's soccer, women's field hockey, men's water polo and women's volleyball. For example, Division I volleyball programs usually require a minimum of 19 contests to satisfy the minimum competition criteria for purposes of sport sponsorship -- but that number was cut in half (and rounded up) to 10 contests for 2020-21 based on the 3C’s action.
The 3C noted that the waiver reduces the required number of minimum contests in these sports by 50% and results in the same reduction to the number of contests required for championships selection and provides flexibility for scheduling based on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on fall sports.
The following chart shows the legislated minimum contests requirements for these fall sports and the minimum required pursuant to the blanket waiver:
For purposes of counting these sports toward Division I sport sponsorship requirements, Division I schools must confirm that their respective teams have competed in intercollegiate competition a minimum number of times.
However, with Fall 2020 sport seasons shrinking (or disappearing altogether as some Division I conferences have announced fall sports postponed or canceled), what membership scheduling obligations should still apply continues to be reset. This recent decision by the 3C enabled the conferences and institutions still pondering how to schedule their fall sports within the broader and consistently fluid COVID-19 environment to know the minimum competition “bar” would be lowered.
There has been no declaration yet on how many 2020-21 membership requirements tied to sport sponsorship may be amended or afforded legislative relief through blanket waivers. Aside from the recent 50% reduction decision by the 3C, there remains more questions than answers about what Division I members need to fulfill in 2020-21 in terms of sport sponsorship and actually putting on games.
How the NCAA Division I governance structure granted legislative relief a few months ago to Division I members who ran into challenges fulfilling Bylaw 20 sport sponsorship membership requirements when spring sports seasons were being canceled in real time may portend what may be in store for 2020-21 sport seasons.
Back in March, the 3C approved a blanket waiver to provide relief from sports sponsorship requirements (Bylaws 20.9.6 and 20.9.9.1) for the 2019-20 academic year for institutions that canceled spring seasons due to COVID-19. This relief waived the 16-sport requirement (which includes a minimum of at least 6 male/mixed teams and 8 female teams) for FBS institutions, for example.
The 3C also approved a blanket waiver a few months ago to provide relief from the three-season requirement (Bylaw 20.9.5) for the 2019-20 academic year for institutions that canceled spring seasons due to COVID-19. The three-season requirement calls for at least one male/mixed team and one female team to be sponsored in each of the fall, winter, and spring sport seasons. Finally, the 3C approved a blanket waiver to provide relief from the scheduling requirements for spring sports (Bylaw 20.9.7) for the 2019-20 academic year for institutions that canceled spring seasons due to COVID-19 -- this last requirement mandates Division I schools meet their minimum number of contests by playing other Division I institutions (not Division II; NAIA; etc).
The ACC’s recent fall sports schedule announcement likely has the wheels turning of Olympic sport student-athletes across the conference. For example, an ACC soccer student-athlete’s questions and concerns may include:
Are we only playing 6 games and then a conference championship? That does not seem like a “full season” to me.
Since our last few fall championship seasons have included 17 or 18 regular season games on average and maybe additional postseason conference tournament and NCAA games, would I get my season of competition back if I only play in 6 games this fall?
I’m a senior this fall. Six games is not the senior season experience I dreamed about. I want to redshirt this fall and hope we find a vaccine for COVID-19 and things are back to normal by fall 2021. Will I get back my scholarship for next year, too?
These are the types of concerns, questions, and scenarios that all fall Olympic sport student-athletes in leagues walking up to a compressed schedule are starting to ponder. Generally speaking, whether games are played or not in 2020-21, a student-athlete’s athletics scholarship is secure and would be honored by the Division I institution per Bylaw 15 (financial aid) requirements if the student-athlete otherwise remains enrolled and eligible.
Whether student-athletes want to compete in a micro-season and burn one of their seasons of competition is another matter.
Are head coaches and student-athletes aligned in terms of longer term plans that include next season?
Specifically speaking about senior student-athletes who have used to date three of their four permissible seasons of competition, the prospective deferral on competing this fall brings to light the “Moneyball” aspect of managing one’s roster and their scholarship money.
For Division I women’s soccer, for example, the team equivalency scholarship limit is 14 full scholarships per Division I Bylaw 15.3.3.1.2. That is, regardless of your women’s soccer roster size, your women’s soccer team is limited to awarding an aggregate of 14 full athletic scholarships. If a Division I women’s soccer team has five senior student-athletes on its roster for Fall 2020 season on an aggregate of 3.2 full scholarships across those five seniors and all five decide to bypass Fall 2020 and come back in Fall 2021, how that 3.2 scholarship equivalency fits in to the team’s 14 equivalency limit in 2021-22 becomes a trickier proposition.
The team scholarship limit question is directly compounded by what the women’s soccer program has or will do in coming months on the recruiting front -- specifically, what the women’s soccer program does in terms of signing high school, two-year college, and four-year transfer prospects to scholarships as part of next year’s incoming recruiting class. The “Moneyball” aspect to college sports comes in to view in a way that makes the head coach and administration’s roles more akin to a general manager trying to fit scholarship dollars within a league’s salary cap while simultaneously managing a larger roster (e.g., Title IX, equipment/uniform costs; insurance costs). The Moneyball reference serves as a surface-level analogy in terms of managing a roster and a sport program budget. Student-athlete status does not constitute employment and receipt of an athletics scholarship funds does not constitute compensation. Student-athletes are not part of a labor union that would have bargained on such matters.
As the universal recruiting dead period in Division I has continued through August and stymied in-person recruiting evaluations by coaches and in-person visits with recruits over this summer, Division I coaches across all sports may see their incoming 2021 recruiting classes become more mysterious and nebulous than in years past. Sorting out which senior student-athletes may come back next year and whether, either through a blanket NCAA waiver or individually filed waiver, the returning senior’s athletics aid could be exempted for next year are also determinative. There is a far less compelling case for a Division I institution and its student-athlete who is a sophomore or junior to seek to exempt from a team’s NCAA equivalency limit their athletics aid next year noting the individual would logically return next year anyway.
It’s possible the 3C considers granting legislative relief to exempt a fall sport senior student-athlete’s aid next year in a similar fashion as it did, albeit in a limited way, for spring sport senior student-athletes last season. Division I institutions had to scramble to determine the actual-dollar budget impact that underwrites such an exception.
Also on the possible Division I waiver front are whether relief from the NCAA’s season of competition rules (aka once a student-athlete appears in any game/match, they have used a season) would be considered for student-athletes like ACC fall sport student-athletes who might only play in a handful of contests from an abridged season that, to a competitor, does not “feel” like a full season. The five-year eligibility clock is another detail encircling these decisions as the five-years-to-compete-in-four-seasons limit contemplates a buffer year in which a student-athlete may not use one of their four seasons of competition for a variety of reasons (e.g., head coach’s decision not to play student-athlete; ineligibility; injury; transfer residency requirement).
Another major component in the 2020-21 decision-making process is the athletic department budget implications and “roster creep” should more student-athletes opt to return than a Division I sport program’s normal attrition affords. This is where communications between coaching staff, administration, and the student-athlete are critical. It’s possible some student-athletes’ life plans dictate that they move on (e.g., graduate school; employment opportunity) while others may seek to return. This may get resolved on a case-by-case, student-athlete by student-athlete path.
It’s also possible other terms and conditions of a student-athlete’s scholarship may curb that student-athlete’s ability to return the following year on the same scholarship amount they previously were on. For example, some Division I institutions’ scholarship terms and conditions may indicate that a student-athlete who graduates (or was on schedule to graduate, but does not due to failed classes) would not have their athletics scholarship renewed for the year after one of these events takes place. Also, many Division I institutions offer their student-athletes multi-year athletic scholarships that spell out, academic year by academic year, how much athletics scholarship aid the student-athlete will receive --and those amounts can vary. It would be possible for some of the five women’s soccer seniors in the example noted earlier to have “$0” in Year 5 of their multi-year scholarship- --which would initially address the financial implications of a student-athlete who is entering their fourth year on the eligibility clock to return her for a fifth year to, hopefully, play a true, full senior season.
The proliferation of COVID-19 cases nationally will ultimately dictate the fate of fall sports seasons. However, the NCAA’s Division I governance structure, namely through the 3C, could support student-athlete well-being and institutional management of these unknowns by identifying what additional season of competition, competition minimums, and athletics aid exemption waivers would be granted before the fall sport seasons begin -- enabling student-athletes and coaches alike to make informed decisions on playing time or redshirting, returning in 2021-22, and scholarship and budget effects.
Lastly, the emergence of a COVID-19 “opt out” choice for NCAA student-athletes has also come into focus in recent days. NCAA member institutions in conjunction with the NCAA governance leadership have assured student-athletes the ability to opt out of athletics participation in 2020-21 due to risks surrounding COVID-19, but with ability to retain their athletics scholarship in 2020-21 provided the student-athlete remains enrolled and eligible.
Between the proposed fractional seasons in leagues like the ACC and the continued, potential exposure to COVID-19 not going away, coaches and administrators are closely monitoring for the potential uptick in student-athletes opting out of athletics participation in the coming weeks. With more opt outs that result in a shrinking roster, the ability for fall sport teams to complete the decreased minimum Division I contest requirements becomes even more daunting.
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.
