RIT pushes for NCAA rule changes for hockey teams

Five colleges are left out of new NCAA rules providing Division I scholarship athletes with stipends for gas money and school supplies.

Three of the schools are in New York state.

Only one — Rochester Institute of Technology — seems to care.

"We're pretty much the odd man out at RIT," said Lou Spiotti, the Tigers' executive director for intercollegiate athletics. "And we are the ones that have been really pushing the envelope."

RIT has pushed to change an NCAA rule that prohibits multi-divisional schools like them from offering athletic scholarships. RIT is Division III, which doesn't allow athletic scholarships, but their men's and women's hockey teams compete in Division I, which does.

The school was unable to gather support to raise the suggested rule change at this year's NCAA convention in mid-January, when schools from the Power 5 conferences — the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern — voted to expand D-I scholarships by adding cost-of-attendance stipends, generally between $2,000 to $4,000 per student-athlete.

Colleges can offer the stipends beginning this fall.

At RIT, undergraduate tuition for 2014-15 is $35,256, with room and board adding roughly $11,000. Books, transportation and other costs that would be part of any cost-of-attendance stipend, were it possible, are estimated at $2,025.

"You get good at budgeting ... (and) you are always looking at your gas gauge," said Matt Garbowsky, a marketing major and senior captain on the RIT hockey team.

Cost was a major consideration when deciding where to go for college, Garbowsky said. He suffered a broken wrist last season and, had he not been able to return, likely would have received an extra year of eligibility through a medical red-shirt from the NCAA. But he would have had to pay for it.

"Scholarships would be a huge difference maker," said Garbowsky, who, relies on financial aid and his parents back in St. George, Onatrio, Canada, to cover tuition, room and board.

Supporters of the cost-of-attendance stipends argue the add-ons are the right thing to do, no doubt influenced by intensifying national pressure. Four in five student-athletes at the D-I level live below the poverty line, according to a 2011 study by the National College Players Association and Drexel University. At the time of the study, the average shortfall between a full scholarship and out-of-pocket expenses was $3,222 per athlete.

Skeptics worry that the move will put smaller, financially strapped schools at a disadvantage and might trigger a widespread reduction in sports offerings as a result. Colleges can choose to extend the stipends to one sport over another, so long as an equal number of men and women receive the benefit.

"It is going to be interesting how it shakes out," said Robert DeGregorio, commissioner for the Atlantic Hockey Conference, which has a mix of D-1 and multi-divisional schools, including RIT. "I don't think it is a good thing in the long run. It is the beginning of changing athletes at the Division I college level from amateurs to pros. We are going to end up being like the minor leagues."

RIT and the other overlooked multi-divisionals — which include Hobart College (men's lacrosse) in Geneva and Union College (men and women's hockey) in Schenectady — have relied on promises of quality academics, solid career placement and storied tradition when recruiting. RIT men's hockey moved up in 2005-06, and five years later made an historic run to the Frozen Four. The women followed in 2012-13.

Garbowsky hits all of the common selling points when explaining why he picked RIT over other D-I contenders, including Bowling Green, Northern Michigan and Canisius. A campus visit also was key, seeing the atmosphere around the program, as was the location, allowing family to easily drive down from Canada to see his games. He is the team's leading scorer and has the second-most goals of any D-I collegiate player nationwide this season.

"Do we get the blue-chip player? Seldom," Spiotti said. "Do we get good ones? Yes, we do. It is because we get the right ones coming here for the right reasons. But with these new rules, it has become increasingly challenging for us ... to compete against the big-time schools."

He is optimistic, adding: "I think there is a sentiment out there, now that sentiment is growing, of why hold these schools back?" But when it comes to arguing for a level playing field, RIT stands alone.

Others are content

Hobart doesn't want to change the scholarship rules. Neither does Union College or the other omitted schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (women's rowing) in Cambridge, Mass., or Franklin & Marshall College (wrestling) in Lancaster, Pa.

"We are comfortable with our current scenario and feel it is the best fit for our institution," said Jim McLaughlin, athletic director at Union, whose men's hockey team is the defending national champion.

Said Hobart's Brian Miller, associate athletic director for compliance: "It's a philosophy, more than anything else. ... We are a smaller school. We are a Division III member in every other sport."

The stipends will be unrestricted, according to the NCAA, meaning student-athletes need not provide receipts or otherwise document how they spend the money. Cost of attendance is calculated by the institution's financial aid office according to a federal formula. Stipends must be offered to the same number of men as women, presenting another problem for multi-divisional schools that are D-I in only one sport.

NCAA bylaws dictate that D-III schools with D-I teams follow the more restrictive rules of either division. That has been the case since 1994, though reforms adopted a decade later allowed established programs to seek a waiver. RIT came into the multi-divisional ranks since that time. Much of the reluctance in revisiting the scholarship issue is that those schools with exceptions have had to fight to keep them, Spiotti said, adding he understood the reticence: "There are no hard feelings."

Scholarships are not the only disparity. RIT and the others must comply with the more restrictive divisional rule in every instance. So while other D-I programs also are allowed to offer unlimited meals, RIT can provide its hockey players with meals only when they are traveling.

Another alternative

DeGregorio doesn't share Spiotti's optimism. The Tigers face "a tough, up-road fight for them to do it on their own," he said.

He has his own vision of reform. Rather than allow the Power 5 conferences to rewrite the rulebook, he thinks the NCAA should be federated by sport, such that only the 60 member institutions playing D-I ice hockey vote on D-I hockey issues. To make it fair, he said, any athlete competing in a D-I sport at one of these multi-divisional schools would be ineligible to compete in any other sport at the school.

"What's going to happen is the haves — the big schools that are playing hockey — are going to have a greater advantage than the have-nots. And there are Division Is that are have-nots," he said. Under a federate system: "All the schools, and only the schools that are playing Division I hockey can steer the ship."

The federation concept has the support of other hockey schools, he said, but likely would take two or three years to win NCAA approval, if at all. It could be that the have-nots hold sway, and reject the rules pushed by the bigger schools.

"Some people say that would bring about a lawsuit," DeGregorio said. "Bring it on. You want to play hockey under these rules, or you don't."

BDSHARP@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/sharproc