NCAA remains off-limits to foreign student-athletes

MANILA, Philippines – It may take a long time before foreign student-athletes will be allowed to suit up in the National Collegiate Athletic Association again.

NCAA Management Committee chair Fr. Vic Calvo, OP, of host Letran said most schools are in agreement that they will stick with the decision to outlaw foreigners from playing starting in Season 96.

“As of the moment, majority of the NCAA schools agreed that there are more negative [aspects]. They [foreign student-athletes] have done more harm than good,” said Calvo in Tuesday’s online PSA Forum.

In contrast, the UAAP and other college-level leagues in Manila and provinces continuously allow foreigners.

The country’s oldest collegiate league bid goodbye to foreign athletes last season that was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic after deciding a few years back to do away with the decades-long practice of getting international reinforcements.

Calvo, however, did not discount the possibility of the league welcoming them back.

“The NCAA has always been dynamic, anything can happen. The NCAA is a collegial body, it’s a democratic association,” said Calvo.

But it will be a long, tedious process though as it would need for a school to make the recommendation and convince the majority, or at least six members, to agree with it.

It can be recalled that it took the NCAA almost a decade before the full implementation of the import ban was enforced.

The chronological order of the decision started with former Letran rector Fr. Tamerlane Lana, OP, making the first proposal in 2011 that was implemented the next year and eventually set a timeline to stop recruiting in 2014.

All the remaining foreign student-athletes recruited before the 2014 will then be allowed to play until last season.