NCAA grants extra year of eligibility for athletes in spring sports

By Steve Lansdale

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — When the novel coronavirus shut down businesses and organizations across the country and in many parts of the world, one visible change in the United States was the shutdown of college and professional sports. At the college level, there were announcements that some conferences were “suspending play,” but before long those decisions were wrestled away from the conference commissioners when the NCAA cancelled all remaining athletic competition and championships for the remainder of the 2019-20 season.

So while it wasn’t at the top of the list of the most important questions being asked these days, one issue that was raised repeatedly was whether anything could be done to extend the amateur eligibility of collegiate athletes who play spring sports, especially the seniors expecting to compete in their final college seasons in 2020.

The Division I Council addressed that issue [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]Monday when it voted to allow schools to provide spring-sport student-athletes an extra year of competition by extending their period of eligibility.

Council chair M. Grace Calhoun, the athletics director at Penn, said the rulings transfer the power to govern possible eligibility extensions from the NCAA to the individual member institutions.

“The Council’s decision gives individual schools the flexibility to make decisions at a campus level,” Calhoun said. “The Board of Governors encouraged conferences and schools to take action in the best interest of student-athletes and their communities, and now schools have the opportunity to do that.”

In addition to the extra season of eligibility for spring student-athletes, financial aid rules also were altered to allow teams to increase the number of athletes on scholarship in order to accommodate the incoming recruits, along with all of the returning athletes. Schools were granted the further flexibility to give students the change to return for another year without requiring that aid would be provided at the same level, a concession that applies only to athletes who would have completed their college eligibility in 2019-20.

Div. I rules allow athletes to compete in four seasons over a five-year period. Monday’s NCAA rulings were particularly important for athletes who were completing their fifth season this year and had their final years of competition ended prematurely by coronavirus.

Teams competing in winter sports were not affected by Monday’s announcement, as the decision was made not to extend the eligibility of athletes whose seasons were mostly or completely completed. The only spring sport that had played enough games was baseball — Texas played 17 before the season was cancelled — which also will have the option of expanding rosters.
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