INDIANAPOLIS -- An estimated 10 percent of Division I teams could lose scholarships starting in the fall of 2005 if a broad academic reform proposal is approved by the NCAA in April.

The penalty would be enforced if an athlete leaves school while in poor academic standing. The team could award the scholarship to a walk-on, but would be prevented from recruiting a new player for one year.

"The penalty is that it does not allow you to have a competitive opportunity to recruit a student-athlete," said Todd Turner, whose committee recommended the penalties and rewards based on academic performance.

Turner said during a conference call Wednesday that the NCAA would collect data this year and next year before enforcing any new rules affecting the organization's 6,138 teams.

The NCAA Board of Directors must still approve the proposal at an April 29 meeting before it could take effect.

Teams could avoid a penalty if their academic progress rate -- a formula used to determine progress toward graduation -- is high enough.

Todd Petr, the NCAA's managing director of research, said about one-third of all teams could be affected by the penalty, based on current figures. But only about 10 percent of all teams would be sanctioned.

"If you lost one kid in five years, you wouldn't necessarily be subjected to it if you were good enough with the annual academic progress rate," Petr said.

The legislation also requires schools to take the penalty at the earliest possible opportunity.

"It affects any team that has a student who decides not to return, turns pro early or leaves to work on the family farm," said Diane Dickman, managing director of membership services.

If the loss of scholarships affects a school's Title IX compliance, a school could file an appeal to be reinstated, said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for membership services.

Approved in 1972, Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex by any school that receives federal money.

The academic reform proposal now before the NCAA would begin penalizing teams more severely in 2007 for consistently poor academic performances. The standards have not yet been determined because the NCAA is still collecting data.

If the proposal is approved, the NCAA will judge schools on two components: graduation success and academic progress.

The new graduation calculation would not count transfers against the success rate but would likely consider whether the student left school in good academic standing.

Under federal guidelines, the school from which a student leaves is penalized, while any school the student transfers to is not credited with his or her graduation.

Schools in violation of the proposed policy could receive an increasingly harsher penalty each year, from warning letters to ineligibility for postseason play and the loss of money from NCAA championship events.

Should the pattern continue for four consecutive years, schools could face the most severe penalty -- the loss of NCAA money -- although Turner has said he didn't expect any school to reach that level.

Turner said warning letters would be sent in the fall of 2007, although the most significant penalties would not be enforced until 2008-09.

But NCAA officials remain hopeful that universities will never face the most severe sanctions.

"What I expect to happen is that there will be a transitionary period," president Myles Brand said. "My full expectation is that behavior will change and academics will become much more important than it is now."