Is The NCAA’s Division 1 Transition Period Necessary In College Basketball?

The NCAA’s current four-year transition policy for schools making the jump to Division 1 athletics is robbing student-athletes of the complete college athletics experience.

It seems like every year, especially in college basketball, we see the name of some school we’ve never heard of scroll across the bottom of our television sets while watching any given sports channel. Many times, those school’s names appear across from schools we actually have heard of. They are competing against one another in an athletic competition that matters — sort of.

These “unheard-of” schools aren’t just popping up out of thin air. Often times, they are a Division II or FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) school that has just made the jump to Division 1 or FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision). That jump, by rule of the NCAA, requires a four-year transition period for the school’s entire athletic department where none of the teams or athlete’s at that school are allowed to compete for national championships. The rule is supposedly in place to help the athletic departments at these new Division 1 schools handle and absorb the complexities of being a Division 1 program.

Curiously, however, the schools are still allowed to compete for conference championships. Be that as it may, should a team from the school win its conference championship during the four-year transition period, they still cannot move on to the NCAA Championships as any other school would.

I’m not a big fan of this process. You would think the NCAA has a pretty good system in place to be able to tell which athletic departments are ready to make the jump and which ones are not. The product on the fields and courts shouldn’t have anything to do with the transition process of the administrative side of the athletic departments. Otherwise, you have athletes playing for conference titles as their ceiling, and worse, athletes on other teams possibly losing contests to schools are aren’t even full-fledged members yet and being eliminated from championships as a result.

Twice this season in college basketball alone, two schools in the middle of NCAA transition periods have knocked off teams who have been competing at the Division 1 level for most of their histories. Back on November 22nd, Omaha — a member of the Summit League — traveled to Milwaukee and took down Marquette, a member of the Big East. Then on December 10th, Incarnate Word — a member of the Southland Conference — pulled off a win in Lincoln, Nebraska over the Nebraska Cornhuskers of the Big Ten.

Both wins would be looked at as quality road wins for the transition schools if they were eligible for the NCAA Tournament. Instead, both of those games will now be filed as bad losses come selection time should Nebraska or Marquette find themselves on the bubble — potentially eliminating both teams from contention. What’s more, there’s nothing right now — specifically in the case of Incarnate Word — that says they aren’t the best team in the Southland Conference. Be that as it may, should they somehow go on to go unbeaten in conference play, they’ll sit home and watch what would essentially be a lesser team from their conference participate in March Madness.

There has to be a better way. Right now, it really just seems like the current process is robbing would-be experiences from the student athletes.

Personally, I’d like to see a black and white acceptance policy by the NCAA for inclusion in Division 1 athletics. Once a school gets the go-ahead to go Division 1, they should immediately be allowed to compete for any and all championships every other school and athlete is eligible to compete for. On the administrative side, the NCAA could still provide some sort of cover down and oversight to the transitioning athletic departments in order to guide them along the way.

For an organization that claims to put the student-athlete first in everything it does, the NCAA sure looks like it’s missing the mark with this process. Hopefully, someone within the organization will see the flaws in the current process and make the necessary changes needed to allow athletes at transition schools the complete student-athlete experience.

The NCAA has changed rules on the fly before when there were obvious problems with their policies. They can do it again — and in this case — they should do so as soon as possible.

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