April 30, 2009

VANCOUVER, B.C. -

By Lyndon Little, Vancouver Sun

It had all the makings of an awkward situation.

Here was Simon Fraser University athletic director Dr. David Murphy attending a Canadian Interuniversity Sport meeting in Toronto earlier this week where, in effect, he was to inform his Canadian colleagues his school was rejecting them in favour of the NCAA.

"I still have a lot of good friends in the CIS so, personally, it will be very difficult when we leave," commented the former dental surgeon and ex-St. Mary's University quarterback Wednesday.

For years, the dream of NCAA membership was just that for Canadian schools.

That's because the constitution of the elite U.S. collegiate athletic body forbid non-U.S. membership. That door, however, has recently swung open a crack, with both the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser the only Canadian schools who have, to date, shown a serious interest in making the switch.

While UBC has deferred a decision until at least 2010, SFU is ready to go. On March 26 the university's board of governors voted unanimously to support the athletic department's bid to join the NCAA at the Division II level.

There are reportedly 17 American schools plus SFU seeking 10 open spots in NCAA Division II.

Assuming SFU is accepted (a decision is expected in mid-July) it will trigger a four-year process that will see all Clan sports stay with their existing organizations -- both NAIA and CIS -- for two years while the athletic department adjusts to NCAA compliance standards. In the third year SFU will begin playing NCAA schools but will not be eligible for post-season play. By 2012-13 SFU would have full NCAA membership.

The Clan is being supported in its bid by the Great Northern Athletic Conference, which is the Division II body all SFU team would join.

The CIS has yet to make a decision on whether it will permit one of its institutions to have dual membership in both the CIS and NCAA. That apparently is a much bigger issue for UBC (which without dual membership would have both a men's and women's hockey program without a place to play) than SFU, which has no hockey and wants to take all its sports into the NCAA realm.

"As a long-term CIS supporter I came into this discussion with an admitted bias toward the Canadian system," says Murphy, who for the time being remains the chair of the CIS eligibility committee. "But I kept an open mind. After all, at SFU we do have a 35-year history of competing against American schools (through the small-college NAIA). We're really going back to our roots."

Rather than abandoning a Canadian perspective on college sports -- as some in the CIS have accused SFU of doing -- Murphy insists it's just the opposite.

"What I see is us bringing Canadian values to the rest of the world," he says.