When the NCAA was weighing its options for moving its national office three years ago, one of the most enticing opportunities was the chance to work with a blank technological slate. The old office's operating systems were becoming antiquated, and some member schools were growing at a faster rate technologically than the home office.

When the decision was made to move to Indianapolis, one of the selling points of the new headquarters was that not only would it provide a great space, but a great cyberspace as well.

Indeed, as the office enters its second year of operation, its technological capabilities are being rammed up, so to speak, to the tune of increased service to member schools, easier and more efficient information sharing, and an enhanced bottom line.

"Part of the reason for moving was to effect change from a technological standpoint," said Jim Isch, NCAA vice-president for finance and information services. "We've heard the membership. A major component in how we intend to improve service is through technology. We're trying to move with our membership."

The movement is akin to a train leaving the station -- slow at first, but building momentum. One of the keys was to design the building to maximize potential. The changes began with sophisticated fiber-optic cabling and wiring, along with new network electronics. The system was designed to be flexible, one that was the right size to start with but that could be expanded when necessary. Once that foundation was laid, the office needed the infrastructure to handle the load.

"I've told people during the move that it's like going from a Geo Metro to a Ferrari as far as speed and sophistication is concerned," said Rhonda Winter, NCAA director of information technology and services. "But until you have the data center capable of receiving the data that fast, you won't be operating as efficiently as you can. That's what we're in the process of doing."

It may be the more tedious part of the momentum-building process, but it is necessary. Though Winter said the results are hard to see at first, the train has indeed left the station.

"It's hard to be patient through the infrastructure upgrade because people aren't seeing immediate results," she said.

"We've spent much of the last year trying to develop the infrastructure to deliver the expectations touted before the move."

Those expectations are coming to fruition.

One of the foundation pieces of the technological structure is the membership database, a goliath of a collection of information about member schools, sports sponsorship and athletics department personnel. Once maintained solely by the national office staff, the goal is to shift the maintenance to the schools themselves. In fact, what used to be a cumbersome collection process soon should be faster, more efficient and more accurate.

In the past, the staff sent out a collection mailing, recorded the data, sent out another mailing for schools to check the information for accuracy and then did a final keypunch in the database. Depending on the availability of the people responsible for the data at member schools, the old process took anywhere from four to eight weeks. In many cases, the information in the database would be out of date by the time it finally was recorded.

Revenue distribution also was affected because it was based on sports sponsorship. If the sports sponsorship data lagged, so did the timeliness and accuracy of the distribution.

But that database is moving to an online format in which schools will be able to update their own information as soon as it changes.

"It makes sense for schools to be responsible for updating information they own," Winter said. "It will make that information more accurate, reliable and timely."

It also will allow the national office to be able to sort the information to best fit whatever business practice is at hand. Distributions will be simpler, and information affecting various NCAA research needs will be readily available.

Right now, membership information is being collected and stored in the database. Membership feedback and consultant advice will give the staff a better idea how to arrange the massive amounts of data to best suit the NCAA's future business practices.

Online publications

Another area where technology will improve information flow and reduce costs at the same time is in the availability of NCAA publications and forms online. In the next year, many of those publications will be offered digitally, including graduation-rates reports, which used to cost the NCAA about $220,000 annually to print -- and more frighteningly -- another $150,000 to mail. Now, however, the grad-rates data is packaged in a CD for every recipient at a third of the cost. The information also will be posted on NCAA Online.

The national office staff is preparing to place most publications included in the publications catalogue in an "NCAA Library" on NCAA Online. Such publications include sports records books, playing rules, research publications, the NCAA Directory, Convention Proceedings, Annual Reports, the Guide for the College-Bound Student-Athlete and Achieving Gender Equity. The publications will be available in a PDF format, free of charge.

"For the first time, most of our published material would be exposed to the millions who access us through the Internet," said David Pickle, NCAA director of printed communications. "Although we sell a good amount of material as it is, our actual publications audience is small compared to what it could be if we took advantage of the immensity of the Internet."

Pickle said the mailing list for the publications catalogue contains about 30,000 names, an audience that could increase dramatically with Internet use.

He also said that while posting publications online could add work for the staff in various ways, it would reduce work and costs in others.

"For example, inquiries about records or playing rules could be handled simply by asking the caller to download the appropriate publication." Pickle said.

He said that in some cases -- records books, for example -- users may find it more convenient to work with a computer copy of the publication. "These PDFs will be fully searchable, and I think that will be a major benefit that print simply can't deliver," he said. "In the long term, I'm sure we'll create records books in a database, but for the time being, this will present users with some appealing options they haven't had before."

The creation of digitized publications also will allow the individual departments responsible for each publication to make a judgment about whether a printed piece is needed.

"For the time being, we'll be doing both -- online and printed delivery -- for many of our publications, but in time, we expect the print volume to decrease," Pickle said.

Data entry reduced

Some other initiatives already have debuted. The NCAA's Legislative Services Database, a Web-based initiative through NCAA Online, was introduced August 1. The database allows the three division Manuals and interpretations to be available through a Web browser and at a faster access speed than before. The online Manuals will be updated after each legislative cycle. The database will contain more than 9,000 interpretations of NCAA rules.

Another initiative involves electronic submission of the NCAA sports-sponsorship form, the institutional demographic form and the conference membership information form via NCAA Online for the 2000-01 academic year. Member institutions and conferences will not be receiving the forms through traditional mail. Other forms available online this year are the Woman of the Year and Honors Program nomination forms.

The electronic revolution also has hit the statistics area. The Division I football stats program has been rewritten -- for the first time since 1975 -- to allow direct transmission from press box computers into the NCAA system.

This year will serve as a trial run for the initiative, which requires specific software that not every Division I-A or I-AA school has. For those schools that do not have the software, the usual method of fax transmission still will be available. In time, however, a more electronic-based transmission will reduce the amount of data entry for the staff, and thus the likelihood of human error in compiling the stats.

"About 85 to 90 percent of Divisions I-A and I-AA schools already have the software packages," said Jim Wright, NCAA director of statistics. "Schools and conferences have been the ones asking us when we'll be able to do this because they've had the capability for a couple of years now."

Wright said the electronic transmission for football stats is a precursor to what he thinks will be a complete overhaul of the way all the NCAA's sports statistics are compiled. He said the staff chose to begin with Divisions I-A and I-AA football because they are the most complicated and ambitious programs (since they are weekly reports that track every player from every school who handles the ball in each game). Once that is mastered, other sports and divisions could follow.

The goal of the program is increased accuracy. "It will allow us to be statisticians more than data-entry people," Wright said.

That increased accuracy component is not just a byproduct of the statistics initiative, either. It's common among the goals with all the technological advancements the NCAA has introduced or will be introducing over the next few months.

"In the end, our goals are to be responsive, communicative and accessible -- all the while being easy to use and presenting a good image," Winter said.

And it's an image that most certainly will be presented electronically.

High tech goes online, on-camera

BY HEATHER YOST
STAFF WRITER

"Lights, camera, keyboard" may be the new prompt for in-house broadcasts from the NCAA national office if a trend to meet via the Internet gains momentum.