This bylaw even has a chart attached to it to show you how it works. The main goal of this bylaw is to discourage present NAIA members to even apply for the NCAA. The bylaw was submitted by the NAIA Conference Commissioners Association as a way to keep membership in place. The penalty for a school seeking membership in the NCAA is each school would be ineligible for NAIA National Championships, some conferences have other penalties in place as well within that conference. This would all happen if passed, despite the school having paid a NAIA full-membership fee.

There are several factors involved in this process depending on what happens to the school’s NCAA application being accepted or denied.

On the other hand other NAIA members are now allowed to hold dual memberships in the National Christian College Athletic Association or the United States Collegiate Athletic Association. Dual NAIA member schools are also allowed to compete in those associations national championships. NAIA conferences are also out recruiting NCCAA and USCAA members to join and secure dual membership. My question is, What is the difference? Those schools looking to join the NAIA in this process do not go through a lengthy membership process, those accepted at this year’s convention will be considered full NAIA members. I have talked with NAIA schools who are looking at going to the NCAA who do not like this process of adding new members just to add members. Some schools looking to the join the NAIA at this convention have already been approved for membership in some NAIA conferences.

I remember when they passed this bylaw to not allow “for-profit” schools membership into the NAIA. Many AD’s told me it was a bad bylaw. It still passed and so several schools seeking NAIA membership were forced to look at the NCAA. Now these same schools will be allowed to join with “full” rights and some have already been accepted by NAIA conferences. So this bylaw will help some NAIA conferences survive, one being the Sunrise Conference on the east coast. The NAIA is looking to up it’s membership numbers, this is one of the ways they will be doing it. The NCAA will lose some schools because of this change, mainly because they like the less complicated rules and guidelines of membership in the NAIA.

At the present time it seems as the NAIA is in a one-sided battle against the NCAA. Let’s face it the NCAA is the “BIG DOG” in this fight and does not even consider the NAIA as a potential danger. The NCAA could have easily destroyed the structure of the NAIA, but decided against that. The main reason is the NCAA decided on limiting the number of schools they accepted into Division II. The NCAA even turned down some very highly qualified NAIA schools, including one American Mideast Conference who will not reapply this year for D2 membership. Had D2 accepted every application and would have committed to taking all applications in the future in my estimation you would have seen a large exodus of NAIA members this year. Instead D2 decided to accept up to 10 new members a year. So you can see from this alone that the NCAA doesn’t see the NAIA as competition. The remarkable thing is that it could still be possible for as many as 15 to 25 NAIA schools to apply this year, despite this limit on membership. 15 schools could be turned down in the process and let me assure you it is no fun to be declined membership after all of the public relations on the issue.

The NAIA conference commissioners need to be working together on how they handle schools leaving one NAIA conference to join another. This issue will continue as long as the NAIA struggles with membership. Also in three years if 30 NAIA members do join D2 (and some join D3) how will this effect present NAIA conferences? This is why it will be important for NAIA conferences to work together instead of grabbing members to keep their conference afloat. The NAIA needs solid conference structure to survive all of the changes.

So who is to blame for the so called “Civil War”, it might be the NAIA. Self-inspection possibly is needed by members at this convention, instead of looking like the “jilted girlfriend”. Keeping the respect of current members is a more important issue then worrying about who plays in national championships. Confidence in the NAIA as an association is at an all-time low according to some NAIA members I have talked to recently. The sad part is that in three years the NAIA could lose 30 quality members to D2. The NAIA members left behind will need to focus on the future of their association and efforts to improve it. To those schools left out of the NCAA it will be worth your time to make the NAIA to work for you and your school.