Contributed by: filbert Friday, August 10 2007 @ 10:48 AM CST
The Division I Board of Directors has enacted a four-year moratorium on permitting institutions to begin the process of joining the division – an action that among other things will prevent a school from moving from another division into Division I or moving between its subdivisions until August 2011.
Although the division recently enacted new Football Bowl Subdivision criteria and established procedural steps to become a Division I member, standards for Division I institutional and conference membership were not reviewed.
The moratorium, which is effective immediately, does not affect 20 institutions that already have entered the seven-year Division I provisional-membership process for new NCAA members or the five-year process to move from Division II — including institutions that currently are officially exploring Division I membership.
The moratorium also prevents institutions in Divisions II and III from seeking reclassification of a specific sport into Division I under multidivision-classification legislation, and prevents a new single-sport or multisport conference from achieving Division I membership until the moratorium ends.
Hat tip: Terry Vandrovec’s Sioux Falls Argus Leader Sports blog[*2] .