If the NCAA has its way, Michigan won’t be the only school shrinking its quality-control staff in future seasons.

The NCAA’s Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet is expected to debate legislation during its meeting this week to cap the number of support-staff members its athletic programs can have.

“There’s always been a number on coaching personnel, but never on the number of overall football-staff specific non-coaching personnel,” Big East senior associate commissioner Nick Carparelli, the chair of the NCAA Football Issues Committee, said last month. “I think the feeling is that a lot of football programs have an exorbitant amount of non-coaching personnel and the question is what can all these people possibly be doing and is it necessary in the area of cost containment?”

While the issue is far from a football-only one, it’s been the subject of more public scrutiny recently because of the NCAA investigation into Michigan’s program.

The NCAA found that Michigan violated limits on staff size when some of its support personnel took part in coaching activities. As part of self-imposed penalties for that and other violations, Michigan reduced its number of quality-control assistants from five to three last month and limited the duties the remaining staffers can take part in this season.

At the time, Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon said the university’s investigation revealed “a number of important topics that need to be discussed” and that “there can be tremendous improvement in the clarity around the job descriptions, what is doable and not doable as it relates to quality-control staff.”

Carparelli said staff-size limits have been a hot-button issue for several years.

In an April 17, 2009, memo to all NCAA Division I members, athletics personnel cabinet chair Petrina Long said her committee, in its initial Sept. 2008 meeting, “identified several key priority items” including “the issue of coaching limits and athletics personnel issues.”

“I don’t think the NCAA does anything because of one incident or one specific institution,” Carparelli said. “I would tend to believe that staff-size limitation has been in the works well before the Michigan situation came to light.”

Any legislation to limit the size of non-coaching staffs must be submitted by July 15 in order to go into effect by the 2011 season.

Carparelli said there’s a headwind to make that happen.

“There’s clearly a movement towards attempting to limit and define the number of total football staff personnel,” he said. “I can’t speak for other conferences, but I know that at our conference meetings (last month) our football coaches had a lengthy discussion on football staff-size limitations and they’re generally in favor.”

Dave Birkett covers University of Michigan football for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached by phone at 734-623-2552 or by e-mail at davidbirkett@annarbor.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.