Could the NCAA become the North American Collegiate Athletic Association? The NCAA recently laid the groundwork for an international expansion. In an almost unnoticed vote during the NCAA Convention last month, NCAA members voted 259-8 in favor of moving forward with a pilot program that would allow Canadian universities to apply for membership in Division II. The move is has precedents.
Most of the Canadian universities that have expressed interest in joining the NCAA have been in the western part of Canada, where there are relatively few universities, and travel costs to many US universities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana would be less than travel to, say, Saskatchewan or Manitoba. To date, SFU (enrollment 18,000) and the
UBC and the U of A are large, urban comprehensive public research universities with research and student admission requirements comparable to PAC-10 universities. However, Canadian scholarship and eligibility rules are different than NCAA rules. For example, hockey players who played in the semi-professional Western Hockey League can play college hockey in