DII members approve sending 5 seasons-of-competition proposal back to governance structure

At the Division II business session Friday at the 2026 NCAA Convention, delegates approved a referral to send a proposal back to the Division II Executive Board for further review. The proposal would permit student-athletes to compete in up to five seasons during their first 10 semesters or 15 quarters of full-time enrollment.

The referral back to the board was approved by a vote of 186-117. Each active Division II school and conference gets a vote at the business session, as does the national Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. The Executive Board is expected to report back to the membership in time for sponsorship of legislation for the 2028 NCAA Convention.

"A referral to the Executive Board will provide the board and Division II governance structure with more time to continue to discuss and review the concerns that have been raised by student-athletes regarding (this proposal)," said Dustyn McKenney, a member of the national Division II SAAC and former men's cross country and track and field student-athlete at Western Oregon. 

Among the concerns student-athletes raised regarding the proposal were the removal of the currently legislated exceptions and waivers associated with the seasons-of-competition legislation. 

McKenney also noted the need to see how the division's new redshirt rule continues to benefit student-athletes before making significant changes. Student-athletes representing a Division II school in their initial year of collegiate enrollment can participate in up to 30% of the maximum permissible number of contests or dates of competition without using a season of competition, regardless of sport. That legislation became effective Aug. 1, 2025.  

Other business session results

In addition to the referral, delegates approved 11 other legislative proposals at the business session, including one to implement the NCAA Power Index for championship selections in team sports and another to create the Division II Women's Bowling Championship. Five proposals were defeated at the business session. 

All proposals voted on at the business session are detailed below. 

NCAA Power Index

Division II delegates overwhelmingly supported a proposal to use the NCAA Power Index for championship selections in team sports beginning in the 2026-27 academic year. 

The NPI — already in use for several years in the NCAA ice hockey championships and recently adopted across all Division III team sports — is a data-driven tool designed to objectively apply selection criteria for championship consideration. It incorporates factors such as winning percentage, strength of schedule, home-away multipliers, quality win bonuses and overtime results, when applicable. What makes the NPI flexible is its use of "dials," which allow sport committees to adjust the weighting of these factors, embedding subjectivity into the criteria up front while ensuring the results are applied consistently and objectively.

Because the NPI eliminates the need for the sport committees to conduct rankings throughout the season, regional advisory committees will be eliminated, starting with the 2026-27 academic year. 

"NPI will provide transparency in our rankings and selections process and be more efficient, while still providing sport committees the opportunity to tailor the metric on a sport-specific basis to ensure it fits the needs of all of our team sport championships," said Regan McAthie, director of athletics at Concordia-St. Paul and chair of the Division II Championships Committee.

Women's bowling 

Delegates approved establishing a Division II Women's Bowling Championship and establishing a Division II Women's Bowling Committee. The first Division II Women's Bowling Championship is set for April 2028. 

To create a Division II championship, division-specific bylaws require at least 35 schools to sponsor the sport. The division surpassed that threshold in the 2023-24 academic year, with 36 active Division II schools reporting that they intended to sponsor the sport in the 2025-26 academic year.

Football-only votes

Delegates from football-sponsoring schools approved a proposal to alter recruiting dead periods in football. Delegates overwhelmingly approved the proposal to specify the following recruiting dead periods: Dec. 22-Jan. 1, the Monday through Wednesday during the week of the annual convention of the American Football Coaches Association, and the Saturday before Memorial Day through Memorial Day. 

Delegates also narrowly defeated a resolution that would have directed the Division II governance structure to revisit the consideration of adding an additional week in the regular season to the football date formula. 

Other approved legislation

• Acrobatics and tumbling and stunt were approved to become NCAA championship sports. All three divisions approved legislation to do so, with the sports' first championships slated for spring 2027. 
• Flag football was approved to be added to the Emerging Sports for Women program in Division II. Divisions I and III approved similar legislation to add flag football as an emerging sport. 
• A proposal was approved to specify that a school's first basketball contest (game or scrimmage) with outside competition cannot occur prior to the Monday that is 17 weeks before the Division II men's and women's championship selection dates.
• A proposal was approved to permit schools to provide retroactive athletics aid during an academic year.
• In golf, a proposal was approved to increase the school and student-athlete playing season maximum limitation to 24 dates of competition and specify that a school may participate in no more than 10 regular-season events.
• A proposal was approved to exempt women's field hockey and women's rowing from maintaining the minimum number of sponsoring schools required to maintain a Division II championship.
• A proposal was approved to permit conferences to count schools in the final year of the membership process toward the minimum of six schools needed to satisfy the sponsorship requirement for automatic qualification. 

Other defeated proposals 

• A proposal was defeated that would have limited a baseball student-athlete's participation in countable athletically related activities to a maximum of four hours per day and 18 hours per week during the nonchampionship segment. The proposal also would have permitted an intrasquad scrimmage during the nonchampionship segment to exceed the four-hours-per-day limitation, provided a baseball student-athlete did not exceed 18 hours per week.
• A proposal was defeated that would have increased the school and student-athlete playing season maximum limitation to 52 contests (games and scrimmages) in baseball.
• A proposal was defeated that would have specified that soccer preseason practice would begin with a four-day acclimatization period for both first-time participants and continuing student-athletes. Additionally, the proposal specified that schools could not begin practice sessions any sooner than 21 days before the first permissible contest or nine days before the school's first day of classes, whichever is earlier.
• A proposal was defeated that specified that a school or student-athlete's playing season in softball would be limited to 56 contests (games and scrimmages) during the segment that concludes with the NCAA championship and four dates of competition (games and scrimmages) during the nonchampionship segment.