Division II is revisiting the way it distributes enhancement funds to its members to ensure that the formula aligns with the division’s strategic-positioning platform.

Enhancement funds are annual distributions from the Division II budget that schools can use as they see fit. Division II currently distributes one-third of the fund equally to member schools, and two-thirds to conference offices based on sports sponsorship and league success in the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

That latter component is what’s at issue. Now that the division has its new strategic-positioning platform that describes a Division II experience based on key characteristics and attributes, the Division II Presidents Council wants to know if success in two championships is an appropriate basis upon which to determine part of the distribution.

The Council has asked various Division II constituents, including the Conference Commissioners Association, to propose alternative models to the distribution formula.

“The enhancement grant program has been a tremendous benefit to conferences, but when it was designed, our current strategic-positioning platform didn’t exist,” said current CCA President Mike Marcil, commissioner of the Sunshine State Conference.

Marcil said the CCA supports distributing one-third of the fund equally and another third based on the number of sports a conference sponsors. However, he said the CCA would prefer a model that blends the one-third previously based on basketball success into the sports-sponsorship prong.

“We understand why men’s and women’s basketball were selected because almost all schools sponsor them, but perhaps a better incentive would be to encourage conferences and institutions to sponsor more sports and conduct championships in those sports,” he said.

Jerry Hughes, athletics director at Central Missouri and a member of the NCAA Council when the Divisions I and II distribution formulas were developed in the early 1990s, said members believed it was important to base at least part of the distribution on competition.

“As we looked at different things to reward, we had conference sport sponsorship, but for the institutions, basketball was the one sport everyone had. Any other sports model cut people out,” Hughes said.

Also, since basketball was in fact providing the funds, the NCAA Council thought it made sense to use success in that sport as the incentive. While Hughes and others understand the need to align the distribution with the Division II strategic-positioning platform, they may not favor a formula that would simply make the payments more uniform.

“From my perspective, we’re all about competition,” Hughes said. “We picked a sport everyone sponsors, and basing some of the distribution on success in that sport is not a big deal to me.”

He said relying more on sport sponsorship would be problematic since some leagues don’t sponsor as many sports as others.

Grand Valley State Athletics Director Tim Selgo said a shift to sports sponsorship would indeed affect some conferences, but he said it’s a fairer approach that better aligns with the division’s emphasis on student-athletes.

“I don’t think that success in basketball – and the revenue that is dependent upon it – is consistent with the platform or the Division II philosophy,” said Selgo, who also is a member of the Division II Budget and Finance Committee, which recently delayed a $300,000 increase to the enhancement fund to accommodate further discussion about whether to change the distribution formula.

Selgo said any change should be phased in to ease the transition for conferences that may be basing future budgets on basketball allocations. In 2007-08, the distributions based on men’s basketball ranged from about $60,000 to $7,000. For women’s basketball, the variance was from about $80,000 to $5,000.

The Presidents Council will review possible alternatives beginning at its August meeting and then give the membership the chance to debate the changes at the 2009 Convention. The earliest possible change would be with the 2009-10 distribution.