NCAA Max Games Reduction: A Reaction

The coronavirus pandemic hit colleges and universities where it hurts the most—in the pocketbook. From Division-I schools on down, there is ample pain to go around.

The NCAA recently made a move to help ease that pain, at least as far as athletic department budgets are concerned.

A key vote by the Division II President’s Council reduced not only the minimum number of game’s a team needed to play, but also the maximum.

That number varies by sport, but it was done in effort to help reduce costs for member institutions.

“The financial challenges faced by institutions because of COVID-19 are considerable, and, as we prepare for summer and fall, they continue to increase,” said Sandra Jordan, chancellor of South Carolina Aiken and chair of the Division II Presidents Council. “The approved reductions strike an important balance in providing schools with scheduling flexibility, maintaining competitive equity within the one-year reductions to minimums and maximums, and continuing to prioritize opportunities for student-athletes to compete in NCAA championships.”

The reduction lasts for just the 2020-21 school year and will return to regular min and max levels for 2021-22.

Uniquely Situated

The NCAA’s max numbers for various sports seem an effort to allow schools to trim all or a large portion of their non-conference schedule.

Basketball, for instance, now has a maximum of 22 games. The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference already plays a 22-game conference schedule, meaning adjusting those schedules is easy. Lop the non-conference games off the top, and be done. Easy-peasy.

Football schedules were dropped from an 11-game max to 10.

Because the closure of Urbana left a hole in the schedules of fellow Mountain East Conference members, in theory, nothing additional was needed.

Only West Liberty, which worked quickly to fill that hole by adding a home date with G-MAC member Ohio Dominican, will need to drop one game from its slate.

Most likely, the game that will be removed is the Sept. 3 home opener against Walsh. That game is the back end of a home-and-home contract.

“I think because of the way the schedule falls, we’ll keep Ohio Dominican and drop the Walsh game,” West Liberty Athletics Director Lynn Ullom said. “But it’s not as simple as choosing one game, as they may have another game they want to keep instead.”

ODU may have to keep WLU. The Panthers have four non-conference games on the schedule: a home date with Shepherd and road matchups at West Liberty, Ashland (G-MAC member starting in 2021) and Northern Michigan.

One of those has to go, and unfortunately for ODU, it will likely be Shepherd. The Rams are members of the PSAC which already plays a 10-game conference schedule. The outlier is the Sept. 3 trip to Columbus to take on the Panthers. Which one do you think the Shepherd athletic department is angling to drop?

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Plusses and Minuses

The good news is sports, such a large fixture of Division II life, are returning.

But the reduced capacity is limiting the experience somewhat for the thousands of athletes, a fact not lost on Ullom.

“We don’t have to go out and find games, so there’s no headache aspect to it,” Ullom said. “But I’m a little sad and disappointed for the athletes. As a player or a coach, you want that competition, and I hate to see there are lost opportunities to compete.”

Ullom knows that the pandemic placed added stress on budgets,nni and a majority of the games is a far better option than say half, or even none. Some colleges were forced to eliminate athletic programs entirely.

Appalachian State recently announced having to cut its men’s soccer, tennis, and indoor track & field teams. It’s not the first institution to make such an announcement and likely won’t be the last.

For programs that survive the fiscal axe, things are starting to improve. With more and more aspects of life once taken for granted being “reopened,” the crawl back to normalcy is quickening its pace.

“On one hand, it’s disappointing, but on the other, we’re anxious to get all of the students around the country back to school,” said Wheeling University women’s basketball coach Mike Llanas. “Now that we are out and restaurants are open, more and more people are going out every day, and hopefully it keeps moving in a positive direction.”

“But we’re excited to get (the students) back in the fall and return to academics and athletics.”

Reduction Breakdown

Each sport has a different amount of games it can schedule. Spring sports like baseball and softball, which schedule doubleheaders primarily as a rule, are limited to 40 and 44, respectively.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, cross country has been reduced to six regular season meets. That seems low, but in 2019, both the men’s’ and women’s’ teams at West Liberty and Wheeling had only four regular season meets.

Ullom admitted he didn’t realize how few meets the teams run each season. His son, Jared, is an all-conference runner for the Hilltoppers, so he’s gotten a more up-close perspective in recent years.

“They don’t run a lot of events,” Ullom said. “Not having a background in that sport, I was surprised at how few times they do run, but it’s all based on being fit and ready at the end of the season.”

Below is the full maximum-game breakdown:

• Baseball: 40
• Basketball: 22
• Cross Country: 6
• Field Hockey: 14
• Football: 10
• Golf: 16
• Lacrosse 16:
• Rowing: 14
• Soccer: 14
• Softball 44:
• Swimming/Diving: 12
• Tennis: 17
• Track (Indoor and Outdoor): 14
• Volleyball: 20
• Wrestling: 12

Another factor is the loss of the exempting of two games for basketball, which allowed events like the MEC vs. PSAC challenge.

“I think if we we’re hosting an event like that, we’d want to continue,” Llanas said. “But I think that all teams that have to travel for those crossover events have to look at it from a budgetary standpoint. I think coaches are going to look to stagger those non-conference games, maybe one this week, one the next, so you’re not playing two back to back and then waiting a week and a half to play again.”