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.
Term-In-Ology: Minimum Contests & Participants
Some of Division I’s core values and tenets carry a qualitative element such as promoting an atmosphere of compliance, maintaining institutional control, and ensuring a high quality student-athlete experience.
At the same time, Division I’s membership requirements also include quantitative minimums and benchmarks related to the number of contests and participants required in order to be a Division I member.
In each sport, a Division I institution's team shall engage in at least a minimum number of intercollegiate contests (against four-year, degree-granting collegiate institutions) per year. In the individual sports and women's rowing, the institution's team shall include a minimum number of participants in each contest that is counted toward meeting the minimum-contests requirement. Here’s a full table of those Division I minimums:
There are a slew of associated exceptions and sport-specific solutions that branch off from the minimum contests requirements, how contests may be counted, and minimum participant numbers.
For example, the competition itself must be against another four-year institution’s varsity intercollegiate athletics team and not the institution’s club team. However, for women’s beach volleyball and women’s rugby, Division I teams in those two sports may count a certain number of contests against another four-year institution’s club team toward the minimum contest requirements.
Individual sports (e.g., track and field; swimming and diving) also script a minimum number of participants for a particular event to count toward the Division I team fulfilling its minimum contest requirements. The concern from the membership is that, for example, a Division I institution only entering two student-athletes in four cross-country meets does not reflect genuine sponsorship of that sport at the Division I level.
As Division I schools continue navigating this August and beyond the COVID-19 backdrop against their fall sports’ ability to play (along with the viability of their winter and spring sports’ playing seasons), additional legislative relief from the 3C on these minimum Division I contest and participant requirements for 2020-21 may be inevitable.
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.
