More than two years ago, Ohio Northern placed Tom Kaczkowski on administrative leave and named Stacey Hairston interim coach. Eventually, Kaczkowski was fired.

The violations were significant and were undisguised. The team had held extra positional practices over the summer and camp started one week earlier than allowed. Under the coaching change, Ohio Northern suffered and a team that was in the preseason Top 10 finished 4-6.

The coaches in question are gone. The players who benefitted from the extra contact are pretty much gone as well, unless some of that year’s rising sophomores who participated are now seniors. There have been a lot of repercussions already that this program has had to deal with. Other schools have been able to use Ohio Northern’s admission and self-imposed penalties against it in recruiting.

The long time frame goes contrary to the committee’s own documentation of the enforcement process. This from the committee’s FAQ:

The enforcement process is designed to provide a timely, fair and equitable resolution of infractions cases in order to uphold the high standards set for NCAA member institutions, their student-athletes, coaches and athletic administrators in the conduct of intercollegiate athletics.

I suppose fair and equitable is debatable here, though I personally do not believe the punishment fits the crime. Timely resolution, however, is lacking. In its lack of timeliness, the committee has gone contrary to its mission:

It is the mission of the NCAA enforcement program to reduce violations of NCAA legislation and impose appropriate penalties if violations occurred. The program is committed to the fairness of procedures and the timely and equitable resolution of infractions cases. The achievement of these objectives is essential to the conduct of a viable and effective enforcement program. Further, an important consideration in imposing penalties is to provide fairness to uninvolved student-athletes, coaches, administrators, competitors and other institutions.

It shouldn’t take this long. The Division I committee just reported three weeks ago about violations that happened in 2004. Even the case against Baylor men’s basketball, a complex case with significant punishment (the elimination of the program’s non-conference schedule, among others), appears to have taken only nine months.

This punishment should have been imposed in 2003, or 2004 at the latest. One can only hope that the appeals committee can find an alternate punishment that doesn’t punish coaches and players who weren’t in the program when the violations were committed.

The NCAA championships committee has affirmed that the Presidents’ Athletic Conference must wait two years for an automatic bid, just like everyone else, according to a report in the Washington (Pa.) Observer-Reporter.

In April 2005 the league announced it was adding Thomas More as a member, effective the fall of 2005. The conference hoped that the NCAA would waive the two-year waiting period. “It seems the waiting period is designed to monitor newly formed conferences to ensure stability, which we feel is not a concern with the PAC,” said Tori Haring-Smith, president of Washington & Jefferson, at the time.

On a related note, I came across this in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference agreement last night.

Article III. MEMBERSHIP
Section C. Contracts Held By New Members
Contracts held by members at the time of joining the conference are obligations not to be abrogated.

For those of you who aren’t dictionary junkies (I did not know what this word meant either), abrogate means “to abolish, do away with, or annul, especially by authority.” Yet five schools willingly did away with one of their football game contracts for this season anyway.

So the PAC broke its own rules to rush Thomas More into the league, in vain hopes of receiving an automatic bid expressly contrary to Division III rules. And Huntingdon and Montclair State are still paying the price, having been unable to find replacement games.

I’m personally glad this behavior was not rewarded. Breaking 10 contracts in April is not the way to get things done, not in Division III. With St. Vincent headed for the PAC, Seton Hill sounding more likely to move to Division III and even Geneva making noise about coming over from the NAIA, coaches should be wary about scheduling PAC teams for the next few years. Your contract could be next.

Same formula, different name.

Division III calling its power rating formula a “Strength of Schedule Index” was certainly misleading. It didn’t measure how strong the schedule was; it measured how a team did against that schedule. And even though we put a disclaimer on our listing of the index in large, bold type, it didn’t sink in with Division III fans.

But instead of fixing the formula, the championships committee will change the name. This year it will be called the Quality of Wins Index. It still won’t really accurately contribute toward discovering how good a team is, however, and since this is a major factor used in selecting and seeding NCAA playoff teams, it would be helpful if it did.

Here’s the problem — Continue reading →