Division III football dodged a bullet on redshirts this afternoon at the annual NCAA Convention in Indianapolis. A more restrictive redshirt proposal came three votes from passing.

Two years ago, Division III members voted to eliminate the practice of redshirting except for medical reasons. While previously granted redshirts would be honored, no new ones would be awarded. The legislation was part of a package of measures designed to provide more common ground among the 425-plus schools in Division III, some of which came relatively recently from the NAIA and brought with them values that werem’t practiced by the majority of schools.

That 2004 measure passed with more than 60% approval.

Today, however, a proposal was considered that would not honor redshirts granted at other levels of college athletics. Currently, if a student-athlete redshirted outside of Division III and then transferred to a Division III school, he or she would not lose that year of eligibility.

The Presidents Council supported this measure. The membership, thankfully, did not, defeating it 203-199 with four abstentions, according to a source on the convention floor. A swing of three ‘nay’ votes would have carried the proposal and made it effective this August.

In the Presidents Council’s position statement summary, it said, “the student-athlete becomes accountable for the decision to ‘redshirt’ prior to attending a Division III institution.”

That’s all well and good, but shows a distinct lack of knowledge of what athletics at other levels is about. If you’re at a scholarship level and the coach says you’re redshirting, that’s it, end of discussion. Why in the world would we want to punish a kid for seeing the light and coming to Division III, where the student-athlete can be serious about academics and treat sports as something other than a job?

It’s great that Division III is here to rescue kids from the cannon fodder that Division I athletics can be, but instead, this proposal would have pushed kids away from some of the finest institutions in America and towards schools at other levels inside and outside the NCAA.

The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference already uses this model and the Midwest Conference sponsored the legislation. If that’s what they want to do, that’s their choice. But don’t punish a teenager for what a D-I coach foists on them. That isn’t right.

Summarizing other news from the votes today, repealing the 2004 redshirt restrictions failed by a vote of 277-128-1. Schools can now play football one day earlier, the Thursday before Labor Day, but cannot add a day or a practice opportunity to their preseason training camp schedule.

A proposal to increase to 14 (based on enrollment) the number of sports a D-III school is required to offer failed 371-37-3. A proposal to increase it to 12 for schools with enrollment of greater than 1,000 passed, 233-170-5, effective Aug. 1, 2010.

The NCAA Tournament size was capped at 32 for football. Conferences that complete a self-study survey can remain eligible for an automatic bid starting Aug. 1, 2008, even if temporarily falling below seven schools sponsoring a sport. A later proposal said that those conferences which fall below four “core” institutions would not remain eligible to retain automatic bids.