FORT WASHINGTON, Md. -- The agenda Saturday at the NCAA convention signals a groundbreaking move for the organization because of the legislation under consideration -- and the people considering it.

For the first time at the Division I level, student-athletes will participate in voting among several panels. Notably, 15 representatives -- three from each Power 5 conference -- sit on the 80-member group set to move forward with autonomy.

The Division I board of directors in August approved autonomy, which grants power to schools to write some of their own rules. Included in the first batch of changes up for discussion and vote Saturday are a stipend that would pay student-athletes to cover the full cost of college attendance, and a new protocol to treat and prevent head injuries.

Five current and former football players were chosen among the 15 student-athletes on the autonomy voting panel: Oklahoma offensive lineman Ty Darlington, former Minnesota place-kicker Chris Hawthorne, ex-Mississippi State defensive back Jay Hughes, UCLA linebacker Kenny Orjioke and Pitt offensive lineman Artie Rowell.

"Thirty or 40 years from now, I can tell my grandchildren that I was a part of that first group that got to have a say," Darlington said Friday. "That's a huge step, but it's also a huge responsibility, because if you give us a say, that means we have to know what we're talking about."

The road to Saturday's discussion and vote is littered with failed attempts at reform. Most recently, the NCAA leadership approved a cost-of-attendance measure in 2011 that was voted down by the membership.

It is expected to pass on Saturday alongside other new policies.

Much of the Division I governance structure is changing as student-athletes join the legislative mix. The new Division I council, which replaced the legislative and leadership councils, met for the first time Friday.

Friday also marked the first official day of work at the NCAA for former West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck, the association's executive vice president of regulatory affairs. Luck oversees enforcement, eligibility, academic and membership affairs.

He supports paying student-athletes for their images, names and likenesses -- long opposed by the NCAA, which lost an initial battle in U.S. district court over the issue last fall.

To many observers, the appointment of Luck, who served on the first College Football Playoff selection committee, marks another move toward reform by the NCAA.

Like NCAA president Mark Emmert, he favors the inclusion of student-athletes in the voting processes.

"Nobody knows better what's good for the student-athlete than the student-athlete," Luck said Friday.

"It's refreshing to be an adult and to have students involved in governance, because they have a little bit of a different viewpoint. They're going through it. It's a great way to get better information, more information about what challenges the student-athletes are facing."

Interestingly, three of the five football players on the autonomy panel suffered serious injuries in the past two seasons.

Orjioke, the UCLA linebacker, tore an ACL in the fourth game of the season against Arizona State. Rowell, Pitt's returning starter at center, suffered the same injury in Week 2 against Boston College.

And Hughes, in the first quarter of the first game in his junior season in 2013, went down with a torn Achilles while breaking up a pass against Oklahoma State.

Hughes said the injury changed his perspective on the student-athlete experience, better preparing him to represent his peers in this legislative setting.

"It's a sacrifice if you're going to be a student-athlete," said Hughes, who returned for his senior season in 2014 and played in 13 games. "So many times, we put our bodies on the line. I was tearing my body up. So just to see something done about it, it feels good for the guys who are still in school.

"They're the ones who are going to be impacted positively."

A disconnect exists, Orjioke said, between the way collegiate legislators view the student-athlete experience and the reality of it.

"It's a full-time job," he said. "People have to sacrifice previous goals to play football. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but I believe college football is essentially professional football."

Others student-athletes on the autonomy panel: Madison Stein (Kansas softball), Anthony Lyons (Texas Tech baseball), Patrick Andrews (Clemson baseball), Kaila Barber (Notre Dame track and field), Diamond DeShields (Tennessee basketball), Josh Tobias (Florida baseball), McKenzie Fechter (Washington gymnastics), Taylor James (Cal rowing), Ben Marvel-Egel (Purdue golf) and Nandi Mehta (Northwestern soccer).

In the past year, the movement to empower student-athletes was accelerated by the Northwestern union case and the O'Bannon antitrust trial against the NCAA.

Nevertheless, said Hawthorne, who graduated from Minnesota in December 2013 and now works in athletics at Bowling Green, the autonomy panelists owe a debt of gratitude to all of the student-athletes who preceded them.

"We would not be here were it not for the shared interests of student-athletes that have come before us," Hawthorne said. "Ultimately, it wasn't any one case or any one person who built us up to where we are today, and it will continue to be a shared group and a shared investment that moves us to where we need to be."