PROP 48 WON'T BE SOFTENED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 16, 1993                   TAG: 9301160149
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DALLAS                                LENGTH: Medium
PROP 48 WON'T BE SOFTENED
NCAA delegates on Friday refused to give casualties of Proposition 48 a chance for a fourth season of eligibility.
It was the third failed effort in as many years to soften the rigid freshman eligibility rule.
Proposition 48, which was beefed up just last year, requires a 2.5 average in 13 core courses, or in the C-plus to B-minus range. Non-qualifiers or partial qualifiers lose their freshman season of college eligibility and one year of athletic-related financial assistance. The proposal defeated Friday by a 164-148 vote would have allowed those students a fourth season of eligibility based on sound academic progress.
Delegates also passed, after much deliberation, legislation that liberalized rules regarding telephone contact between football coaches and recruits. Coaches had circumvented the old rules by simply calling high school coaches and asking them to have a recruit call them back collect.
In other action, the delegates voted to:
Allow Division I basketball teams to play their first regular-season games on the first Friday after Thanksgiving rather than on Dec. 1.
Permit all full-time men's and women's Division I basketball coaches to recruit off campus during the summer.
Prohibit any athletic department staff member to act as a consultant for recruiting or scouting services.
Permit a Division I member to meet the minimum sports requirements by sponsoring six all-male or mixed teams and eight all-female teams as an alternative to the existing requirement of seven all-male or mixed teams and seven all-female teams.
In other NCAA news:
\ THE BONNIE RULE: Bonnie Frankel, whose college eligibility ran out in 1967, brought down an outdated NCAA rule that could open opportunities for middle-aged women everywhere. Frankel, 48, now will swim for Loyola Marymount in California. She enrolled in junior college in 1962 but quit after two semesters, went to Europe and got married. The NCAA rule in question gave athletes five years to complete their eligibility after first enrolling at a Division I school. The problem was, no women's sports were offered when Frankel was in college. The NCAA did not adopt sports for Division I women until 1981.
During Friday's session, delegates overwhelmingly passed what some called "The Bonnie Rule," which says essentially that women who enrolled before the NCAA began offering women's championships are not subject to the 5-year rule.
\ GENDER STORM BREWING: Money, sex and power. It's not the theme of Madonna's new video. It's the underlying causes behind gender equity, an issue which could rip apart the NCAA.
Veterans of such volatile issues as division restructuring and freshman eligibility say that if some compromise isn't reached during the 1994 NCAA convention, there could be a battle to rival any ever waged in college athletics.
"It all has to do with money and power and sex," said Nora Lynn Finch, associate athletic director at North Carolina State and the first chairman of the NCAA women's basketball tournament. "People who have power do not want to give it up. As a woman, I can understand that. If I were a minority, I could understand it better. If I were poor, I could understand it better still."
On the surface, the issue appears simple: How much of the athletic dollar should go to women's athletics? Surveys indicate most Division I schools allocate about 70 percent for men, which includes football, the biggest consumer and producer of money on most campuses. But a special task force is preparing legislation for schools to vote on next year that will change that ratio, giving women a much bigger slice of the pie.
The College Football Association, which represents all major powers but those in the Big Ten and Pac-10, says finding a way to defend football is a top priority.
"I don't think there's really any question that football is being threatened," said Charlie McClendon, former LSU coach and now executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. "If we go to a 50-50 split between men and women, you could see one-platoon football. You could see some schools just get out of varsity athletics altogether because they just won't be able to afford it."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB