A football movement to make 5 years the norm

When Steve Pederson, athletic director at the University of Nebraska and chairman of the Division I Football Issues Committee, briefed the media six weeks ago on the various proposals that the committee considered, there was one topic at the forefront of his mind.

"Those of you who know me know that I never miss the opportunity to talk about the fifth year of eligibility," he said.

Under his latest initiative, I-A and I-AA football players who finish at least 80 percent of their courseload through four academic years would be allowed to play in a fifth season. Redshirting would also be eliminated.

This idea has been proposed - and shot down - several times over the past 10 years. And while Pederson is certain that "the time has come," the football community still remains deeply divided.

Pederson and his supporters, including American Football Coaches Association executive director Grant Teaff, argue that a fifth year could benefit both football and academics. More bodies on the roster would mean fewer injuries, Pederson said (although the total number of scholarships would not be increased). With redshirting no longer an option, freshmen could also gain experience.

He refuted the notion that players' education would suffer, the main sticking point for opponents of the plan.

"We're talking about the chance to enhance education, not drag it out," Pederson argued. "We certainly believe it will effect graduation rates in a positive way. We've also found that student-athletes who are in school and are playing and are involved in their season generally do their best during that time."

Tim Ford, an associate AD at Yale, sat on the Football Issues Committee as the Ivy League's representative. He said the FIC was presented with information indicating that 64 percent of all football players take more than four years to graduate. Moreover, a survey revealed that 92 percent favor the chance to play in a fifth season.

The Ivy League nevertheless finds this logic flawed.

"It's a little bit backwards," said Jeff Orleans, Executive Director of the Ivy League.

"That's changing the academics to meet the athletics. If people are not ready to graduate after 4 years . because the football experience makes it hard for them to be students in the fall, then we ought to change the football experience so they're ready to graduate."

The Ivy League is not alone. Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis, for instance, told his school's paper that "we stand for" students graduating in four years. Other BCS schools agree, and this concern has mainly been responsible for the proposal's past failures.

It's unclear whether five-year eligibility can avoid a similar fate this time around, if and when formal legislation is introduced.

"The support for this seems to exist in a couple of BCS conferences that . want two bites of the apple," said Drew Galbraith, a Dartmouth associate AD and the Ivy's representative on the NCAA's Academics and Eligibility Committee. "They want to be able to play kids as freshmen in a couple of games and not lose that as a redshirt season."

But nationwide, he said, "I don't think there have been significant changes in the opinions."

And even if the NCAA decides to adopt it, which could not take place until early 2009 at the earliest, the Ivy League would then have to decide whether it wanted to follow suit.

Ford, from Yale; Galbraith, from Dartmouth; and Erin McDermott, a Princeton associate AD, all believe that their respective schools, and the entire League, would not budge from the four-year standard.

Penn coach Al Bagnoli was unaware of this proposal. But, he said, "on the surface of it, it doesn't make any sense." He, too, was confident the Ivy League would not change course.

And last time the issue was formally discussed, the Ivy ADs were all opposed.

Nobody knows the implications if the Ivy League were to find itself as the lone D-I conference with only four years of eligibility.

On the one hand, Orleans pointed out, each year the rest of the country would enroll fewer football players, since each freshman class would be smaller. If some of the players who were not accepted to other programs came to the Ivies, "maybe we'd be better," he said.

On the other hand, Galbraith said, other schools would spin the Ivy's stance as a negative during recruiting. Come to our schools and you can play for five years, they might say, while in the Ivy League you can only play for four.

That stigma would be avoided, of course, in the event that both the NCAA and the Ivies changed their requirements. That could make recruiting easier for Ivy coaches, Orleans speculated, because they would "need to find fewer young men who are good football players and also good students."

Yet these small concerns are clearly secondary to the larger question. Unless Pederson can convince his colleagues that a fifth year will improve academic performance, his initiative will likely be defeated yet again.

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