Breaking: NCAA accepts the hockey counterproposal on age-based eligibility
Sorry for the quick update (at my son’s middle school graduation as this is breaking).
The NCAA D1 Cabinet met and further discussed the hockey model today.
Sources say the NCAA will adopt hockey’s proposed model, where the eligibility clock begins the season following an athlete’s 19th birthday or college enrollment, removing HS graduation.
This seemed dead a week ago. The hockey proposal received support from basketball, soccer, and the service academies.
This is a huge won college hockey commissioners, who spearheaded the counterproposal.
From a memo sent to schools this evening:
Age-Based Collegiate Eligibility Model. The NCAA Division I Cabinet discussed the age-based collegiate eligibility model and stakeholder feedback, including clarifying applications associated with implementing the model.
The cabinet continued to discuss stakeholder feedback from men’s basketball, men’s ice hockey and the U.S. national service academies recommending an adjustment to the age-based collegiate eligibility model. The cabinet supported adjusting the model to remove a student-athlete’s actual or expected high school graduation as a criterion for the start of the five-year period of eligibility. In supporting this adjustment, the cabinet noted that a student-athlete’s five-year period of eligibility would start either upon initial full-time enrollment at any collegiate institution or at the start of the academic year immediately following the student-athlete’s 19th birthday, whichever occurs first. An updated implementation document will be distributed to the membership during the week of June 8.