NAIA Eligibility Rules and Penalties

The National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) is an association that oversees athletics programs at over 500 colleges across the country those are not members of the NCAA. If you are going to an NAIA school, you will be expected to adhere to the following rules which appear in the NAIA Guide for the College Bound Student. (Comments appearing within brackets [...] have been added by us for further explanation.)

To be eligible for any NAIA intercollegiate competition:

1. You must be making normal progress toward a recognized degree and maintain the grade points required to remain in good standing, as set forth by the official catalog of the college you are attending.
   
   
   
   
2. You must be enrolled in a minimum of 12 credit hours (or equivalent) at the time of participation, or if the participation takes place between terms, you must have been enrolled in the term immediately preceding the date of participation. You become ineligible immediately upon dropping below 12 hours of enrollment.
   
   
3. You must pass 24 credit hours [or equivalent] between the term of competition and the earlier of the two immediate previous terms of attendance.
   
   
4. A second term freshman must pass 12 credit hours [or equivalent] between the beginning of the first term of attendance and the start of the second term of attendance.
   
   
5. Repeat courses previously passed in any term cannot count toward the 24 credit hour rule.
   
   
6. You must be eligible in your own conference. [Your conference may have tougher eligibility rules than the NAIA.]
   
   
7. If you are a transfer student from a four-year school, you must have eligibility remaining at the school you are transferring from to be eligible for further intercollegiate competition.
   
   
8. If you are a transfer student who has ever attended a four-year school, you must sit out 16 calendar weeks of residency (112 calendar days) not including summer school, before becoming eligible for intercollegiate competition in any sport which your previous four-year school sponsored during your attendance.
   
   
9. You must be within your first 10 semesters (or 12 trimesters or 15 quarters) of attendance as a regularly enrolled student.
   
   (A term of attendance is considered to be any semester, trimester, or quarter in which you initially enroll for nine or more college credit hours and attend one or more classes. Summer sessions are not included, but night school, extension or correspondence classes are applicable to this ruling.)
   
   
10. You may not participate for more than four seasons in any one sport. A "season of competition" means participation in one or more intercollegiate contests, whether as a freshman, junior varsity, or varsity participant, or in any other athletic competition in which the college is represented.
    
    
11. You shall no longer be eligible for intercollegiate athletics upon completing all requirements for graduation from a four-year college.
    
    
12. If you participate for two different colleges in the same sport, in the same season (example-basketball or Fall golf at a junior college and then transfer to an NAIA school and participate in basketball or Spring golf), you shall be charged with a second season of competition in that sport.
    
    
13. You must be an amateur, as defined by the NAIA, in the sport(s) in which you participate. [You may be a professional in one sport and still be eligible to compete on an NAIA team in another sport, so long as all the other eligibility rules are met. The exact NAIA definition of an amateur is not listed in their Guide for the College Bound Student but is described in the guidelines below, drawn from the NAIA Handbook, eighth edition (Article VII, Section B).]
    

The following acts will cause a student-athlete to lose amateur standing for participation in intercollegiate competition recognized by NAIA in the sport where any or all of said acts occur. You may not:

1. Receive money or other forms of remuneration beyond actual expenses for participating in any athletic contest or program.
   
   
2. Sign a contract with any professional team in any sport, or receive money, other than actual expenses, or other form of remuneration.
   
   
3. Participate in any athletic contest as a member of a professional team.
   
   
4. Coach an organized team or individual for pay beyond actual expenses.
   
   
5. Exploit for remuneration athletic ability or fame through exhibition, radio or television appearance, or use athletic fame to write for news media for pay beyond actual expense.
   
   
6. Receive remuneration for the use of name or picture to promote any commercial product or enterprise.
   
   
7. Enter into an agreement of any kind to compete in professional athletics, either with a professional sports organization or with any individual or group of individuals authorized to represent the athlete with a professional sports organization.
   

PENALTIES FOR VIOLATING ASSOCIATION RULES

Athletes attending NCAA or NAIA member schools are responsible for knowing and abiding by the rules and regulations of their association. Any violations by you may result in your being ineligible for competition. Of course, you can't control the behavior of coaches, boosters, and others. But what you can do is to know the rules and control your own behavior (i.e., abide by the rules). If you don't follow the eligibility rules, you very well might:

1. Make yourself ineligible, resulting in your immediate withdrawal from intercollegiate competition in your sport for the duration of the season.
   
   
2. Find yourself charged with an extra season of competition and a term of attendance for participating. (This will reduce the total number of years you will be allowed to compete.)
   
   
3. Cause an investigation by your association's national eligibility committee that could charge against you a second season of participation for playing while ineligible.
   
   
4. Cause the disallowance of any honors or consideration of such honors given by your association.
   
   
5. Cause your institution to forfeit all contests in which you participated.
   

The NCAA and NAIA investigate each case of suspected eligibility violations individually, so you cannot tell beforehand what infractions will result in which particular penalties. Your best bet, of course, is not to break any rules and not to cast your lot with coaches and schools that have been in trouble with their association over rules violations.

As. a result of recent college sports scandals and increased public alarm over them, the NCAA has recently beefed up its investigation section and is actively looking for rules violations. We don't mean to scare you... but the NCAA and NAIA do!

You can avoid bringing these dire circumstances upon yourself by (a) refusing any temptations to illegal behavior and (b) working hard enough in your academics not only to remain within the eligibility guidelines, but to leave yourself a wide margin. The result of doing this, of course, is something called timely progress toward graduation.

ACADEMIC ELIGIBILITY COMPARED TO ACADEMIC PROGRESS

Athletic eligibility rules as laid out by the NCAA, the NAIA, and most schools and conferences do not assure that you will graduate in four years, although four years is the maximum number you can play. Eligibility rules set only the minimum number of units you can take and still be eligible to compete. After four years of competing in sports, you may still be a year or more away from graduation if you took only the minimum number of units, as some coaches suggest. So, the minimum academic progress that the NCAA and NAIA talk about in their rules is slow progress that will leave you lagging behind classmates.

Often during the past few years, these national governing bodies have considered upgrading the minimum eligibility requirements to make sure that only truly qualified students are allowed to compete and that they maintain their timely progress toward graduation. Each time, however, rules that would toughen academic eligibility have been defeated, sometimes narrowly. The NCAA and NAIA, however, remain concerned about the academic qualifications and timely progress of their student-athletes toward degrees, and so they may pass tougher rules in the future. Be sure to find out about any changes in current rules as they occur, in order to avoid losing your eligibility for sports.