At 2:05 PM  +0000 5/19/96, Kurt Stutt wrote:
>[log in to unmask] (Mike Machnik) wrote:
>>FIGURE 15-3: Where to Count Student-Athletes Who Participate in More Than
>>One Intercollegiate Sport (1996-97 Academic Year)
>
>>DIRECTIONS: Start at 1, football, and keep going until you reach a sport in
>>which the student-athlete participates.  Count the student-athlete in that
>>sport.
>
>>1. Football -> 2. Basketball -> 3. Ice Hockey -> 4. Women's Volleyball ->
>>5. Women's Field Hockey -> ...
>
>You know, this is a great place for a school that has a lousy football
>program to "hide" scholarships for lesser sports.
>
>For instance, say Whatsamatta U. is D1 and wants more than 18 hockey
>players on scholarship.   Make them a punter or something and get them
>on the football team, with full scholarship.  Then they can play
>hockey and not have it count against the hockey scholarships.
>
>This is probably covered somewhere else, a rule that you can't recruit
>someone for a sport they don't play.  But maybe some athlete DOES play
>football and hockey.  The potential for abuse is there.
>
>I have a manual, but don't know where it is.  Is there anything that
>addressess this possibility?
 
I think so.  15.5.7.8.1 says that to be considered a multi-sport athlete
(and only count in one of the sports), a SA must
 
a) "Participate fully in regularly organized practice with each squad";
b) "Participate where qualified in actual competition in each sport" (your
guess is as good as mine as to what this means);
c) "Be a member of each squad for the entire playing and practice season"; and
d) "Have been earnestly recruited to participate in the sport in which
financial aid is counted (i.e., the institution recruiting the SA shall
have a reasonable basis to believe that the SA is capable of participating
in the institution's varsity intercollegiate program in that sport,
including documentation of a record of previous participation in organized
competition in the sport that supports the SA's potential to participate in
that sport in varsity intercollegiate competition)."
 
I suppose that if the school can show a reason for believing that the SA
could play, say, football, then everything is okay.  But just what it takes
to prove this, I don't know.  And the SA would have to at least practice
regularly with the football team.
 
But I expect that if a school was trying to hide some hockey players on the
football team, this would 1) not meet with the approval of the football
coach, and 2) probably quickly draw the attention of the NCAA and not last
long.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
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