Cal asks NCAA for a waiver to count win vs. Grambling for bowl eligibility

Steve Berkowitz | USA TODAY Sports

In a new twist to the question of whether enough teams will meet the NCAA’s normal qualifications for bowl participation to fill all the spots in 40 postseason games, the University of California has asked the NCAA Football Oversight Committee for a waiver that will allow it to count its victory against Grambling among the six needed to play in a bowl game.

Grambling is a Football Championship Subdivision School, and Cal athletics spokesman Wes Mallette told USA TODAY Sports that the request was made because Grambling officials are trying to determine whether the school has awarded a sufficient amount of financial aid to football players for the game to count without a waiver.

Under NCAA rules, FBS schools generally can count one win against an FCS team per season toward the six needed for bowl eligibility. However, for the game to count without a waiver, the FCS school needs to have awarded — on average — at least 90% of the 63 scholarships allowed under FCS rules during a rolling two-year period.

As it pertains to games played this season, according to NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn, FCS schools need to have met that benchmark over the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons.

According to Grambling’s 2013-14 financial report to the NCAA — the most recent one available — the school awarded the equivalent of 52.55 football scholarships in 2013-14. However, that document covers only financial aid awarded by athletics department sources — not all forms of aid that can count toward the scholarship limit. In response to an inquiry from USA TODAY Sports, Grambling’s interim assistant athletic director Patricia Simmons said the school’s athletics department and financial aid office had determined the school awarded the equivalent of 56.44 football scholarships, including all countable aid, in 2014-15. That’s fractionally short of meeting the NCAA’s 90% requirement.

Grambling officials are still seeking to compile the all-countable-aid figure for 2013-14, Simmons said Tuesday night.

Because of that, Cal has filed for the waiver. According to NCAA rules, the waiver can be approved “if a unique or catastrophic situation” affects a given FCS school. Grambling’s athletics program has been through significant upheaval in recent years, including a one-game boycott by football players in October 2013 because of a variety of conditions, including deteriorating facilities and equipment.

If Cal cannot count its victory against Grambling, it will have only five wins toward bowl eligibility going into its regular season finale Saturday against Arizona State in Berkeley.

Cal’s current athletic administration, headed by Michael Williams, was not aware of this as a potential issue, Mallette said, because the contract for the game with Grambling was arranged by the previous administration, led by Sandy Barbour who is now the athletics directory at Penn State.

Mallette said that when Cal athletics officials became aware of the potential problem late last week, they began working with Grambling officials.

Mallette said Cal has made the waiver request “as a fallback option in the unlikely event that Grambling’s calculation does not meet the NCAA requirements. But Grambling has told us and we believe strongly that the requirement has been met and this will not be an issue.”

In September, two other FBS schools, Arizona State and New Mexico, sought — and received — waivers, NCAA spokesman Christopher Radford said.

Cal’s status becomes an issue at a time when 70 other schools have met the six-win requirement for bowl eligibility and the Football Oversight Committee is meeting to discuss how the NCAA should handle the prospect of not having enough teams with at least six wins to fill the 80 bowl slots. The committee said it will render a decision next week.

That possibility is covered by the NCAA’s rules, but the series of procedures to address such a scenario is likely to boil down to one stating that a team with a 5-7 record can become eligible for a bowl game if it achieved “a top-five Academic Progress Rate in the Football Bowl Subdivision for the most recent reporting year.”

The FBS schools with the five best multi-year APR scores in the NCAA’s most recently published reporting year are Wisconsin, Northwestern, Duke, Michigan and Stanford. All five of those schools already have at least six wins this season.