Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Saturday, January 16, 1999

NCAA rule isn’t good
for UH athletics

A new NCAA legislation by the Division-I board of directors allowing schools to add an extra basketball and football game to their schedules spells trouble for University of Hawaii's athletic program.

Beginning with the 1999-2000 season, institutions can choose each year between participating in a certified basketball tournament or adding another game to the regular-season schedule up to 28 games. The current limit is 27.

The same legislation, enacted at the conclusion of the 93rd annual convention in San Antonio, Texas, last week, eliminates all exemptions for certified tournaments except for postseason men's and the women's National Invitation Tournament.

So, for the first time, teams playing in the Rainbow Classic and all other early season tournaments, including Chaminade's Maui Classic, will have to count the games against the limit.

Another blow for UH is the addenda to that legislation allowing schools to schedule a 12th football game in years with a 14-week Saturday window during the season. That will go into effect starting 2003.

NO longer will schools have to schedule Hawaii in order to have a 12th game in football. In an effort to help UH in scheduling because of its geographic distance, the NCAA since the early 1960s had exempted teams scheduling Hawaii, allowing them to play an extra game.

With a 12th game, not counting conference playoffs, that extra-game exemption is no longer an incentive nor really necessary. It figures to make future scheduling in football more difficult for the Rainbows. They're having a tough enough time as it is with the break-up of the Western Athletic Conference.

That won't impact UH for at least four years. Besides, who can guess what the college football landscape will be like then.

Of more immediate concern is the school's basketball program now that the recent legislation may deprive the Rainbow Classic of quality teams.

"They (the NCAA) had to do something. There's a proliferation of tournaments to the point things were getting out of control," said Rainbows' athletic director Hugh Yoshida.

"I don't know how it will play out," Yoshida added. "The schools will have to consider whether they want to play a 28th game at home or go to a certified tournament."

Yoshida thinks the North Carolinas and Kentuckys of college basketball with 20,000-seat arenas might find playing another home game more profitable.

HOWEVER, the NCAA did cushion the blow to certified tournaments outside the continental United States by incorporating in the new legislation that schools can go to them not more than twice every four years. It had been once in four years.

Still, that doesn't help UH, according to a clarification by the NCAA yesterday.

Starting with the 2000-01 season, the NCAA said, schools cannot play in the same tournament more than once every four years or return to the same state or territory for another event during that time.

That will hurt Hawaii, the only Division I university, which is competing with the four other Division II schools locally (Chaminade, Hawaii Pacific, BYU-Hawaii and UH-Hilo) who also hold eight-team, early season tournaments.

The only other positive note is that any school participating in the future tournaments here can count them toward the new maximum of 28, regardless of how many games they actually play. It will count as only one game.

Still, just the thought that we'll be able to see teams such as Duke only once every four years no matter which tournament it's invited to simply with a mere stroke of the pen is a real bummer.