I talked to the NCAA by phone today to finally get an answer to the
questions we raised a couple weeks ago regarding Maine's schedule for this
year and next year.
 
The NCAA will not talk about specific institutions, but I asked the member
of the legislative committee what the rules were when an institution gets
their exemption aspect of a rules violation penalty moved to the next year.
 
According to the NCAA, if you are eligible for the postseason than you get
an exemption for those games.  No mention was made of Maine having to leave
one or two games open.
 
Just to be clear I asked a different question where I wanted to know if an
instution banned from the postseason was allowed to use exemptions in the
regular season this year, would that mean next year they are going to be
held to 34 games and then they are eligible for the postseason after those
34 games.  The answer was yes.
 
So apparently things are just fine with the course of action Maine is
taking, it seems consistent with the NCAA.
 
This didn't seem like a complicated issue to the NCAA, but they didn't cite
a specific rule either.
 
I happened to think that perhaps since Maine is banned from the postseason
this year, perhaps it would be redundent to make take away postseason
exemptions next year and thus force Maine to keep 9 games free to be eligible.
 
The way it is now, Maine has NO exemptions during the regular season.  This
is the way it should be since they took exemptions this year.  But since
there is no postseason this year, why penalize them again next year?
 
To make a long story short, I'm not totally satisfied since I wanted a hard
fact, a rule.  But this is what the NCAA told me, and they don't seem to
have any questions regarding this matter.  They view it cut-and-dry.
---
Deron Treadwell ([log in to unmask])