National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2000
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The NCAA News
Connie Yori, women's basketball coach
Creighton University
Omaha World-Herald
Discussing proposed changes in the summer recruiting calendar for Division I basketball:
"We used to make a living off players who weren't seen during the summer. With players playing on a regular basis in the summer, it has made it more difficult for mid-major schools to recruit because those kids are being seen on a national level. In a lot of ways, the complete elimination of the summer recruiting period would help the mid-major programs because you could focus on recruiting your local players and not have to worry about outside competition on a national level."
Thomas C. Hansen, commissioner
Pacific-10 Conference
Washington Post
"I think it will be very difficult to change the culture of pre-college basketball. Even if the college coaches are not there, will the circumstances change? Some will tell you that nothing we can do is good enough. And others will tell you have to do that to end up with credibility in your proposals. Ninety percent (of the approximately 320 Division I institutions) need summer recruiting for financial reasons and are not involved with (the aspects of summer) where the troubles lie."
Barry Hinson, men's basketball coach
Southwest Missouri State University
Kansas City Star
"Someway or another, buddies, friends, somebody will get hired to see the kids that coaches can't. And won't that be opening things up to boosters and friends of programs? If water can't run one way, it'll run another."
Herb Sendek, men's basketball coach
North Carolina State University
Orlando Sentinel
"I think the first step, cutting from 24 days to 14, has some real merit. I think three-plus weeks is long. Several players leave home and don't return the entire month. I think it makes good sense. (Overall, though,) I don't think that it's a panacea."
Amateurism
Christine Grant, director of women's athletics
University of Iowa
USA Today
"We are talking about a redefinition that drops the notion of amateurism and looks solely at eligibility once athletes enter school. Basically, the NCAA had been trying to monitor what has happened to an athlete from the time they were in the cradle until they were enrolled in college. That isn't humanly possible. ...
"We recognize that a lot of things are going on under the table and that our policies have forced that to happen. Maybe it is time to bring all of that out into the open and deal with the realities of sport today."
Television ratings
David Stern, commissioner
National Basketball Association
The Ottawa (Canada) Sun
Discussing how technology is fractioning off audiences:
"Anyone who thinks that sports ratings are going to do anything but go down under pressure is going to be surprised. It's going to keep happening. For us, it's very much the ability to connect with our fans, to make them want to come to our arena ... to give them the information about our sport that they're looking for -- the video of our sport, the audio ability, the ability to talk to other fans."
Allen Sanderson, sports economist
University of Chicago
Washington Times
"We're dealing with a set amount of discretionary time. There are only so many hours in the day, and faced with each of these many new choices, something has to give. It doesn't help that in this 20-second sound-bite world, games require three consecutive hours of someone's time. But sports, like a lot of other things, run in cycles, and we may very well just be hitting a down mark."
Women's sports coverage
Christine Brennan, USA Today columnist
Portland Press Herald
"I think we're doing a poor job of covering women's sports, especially at a time when most of our circulations are dropping and women and girls are potential new readers for our sports sections."
Coaching
Jan van Breda Kolff, men's basketball coach
Pepperdine University
Albuquerque Journal
Discussing differences in the way coaches motivate student-athletes:
"There were certain basic guidelines when you grew up, certain ground rules that everybody had. Now, in this new 21st century that we're going into, it's a little more relaxed environment in terms of the way the players have been treated at the collegiate level, AAU and high school level."
Rob Evans, men's basketball coach
Arizona State University
Albuquerque Journal
"Kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. The only way they are going to know how much you care is if you spend time with them in the home, in the dorm, different places."