Christine Grant is very nearly the founder of the charge to deregulate amateurism in Division I. She chaired the Division I Academics/Eligibility/ Compliance Cabinet's Agents and Amateurism subcommittee, which authored a package of deregulation proposals that currently is moving through the Division I legislative pipeline.

Grant's thoughts on amateurism:

"I'm Scottish; I was totally indoctrinated as a young person with the concept that an amateur athlete must never be associated with money for participating in sport. I will be very honest. I never until three years ago questioned why. It took me, and it took our committee, almost an entire year to be able to talk about it in a fairly rational way, rather than an emotional way. It was intellectually one of the most challenging things I have ever done.

"Amateurism is a cornerstone of the NCAA philosophy that has stood for over 100 years, and how dare we even contemplate changing it? When we first presented the ideas to the Cabinet, I think most were aghast. We weren't asking for any action, we were just saying, 'Here is where we are in our thinking,' and they were looking at us as though we had horns in our heads. It takes a great deal of time and quality thinking in order to get to a point where you can be even comfortable seriously contemplating changes.

"A pivotal moment in my thinking was the research done by (then NCAA staff member) Carrie Doyle. She found out that in the 19th century, the aristocrats used to have competition, and it was strictly for the aristocrats.

"And it was decided that they had to keep the riff-raff out of sport. In order to do that, they said something to the effect that anyone who worked with their hands, anyone who worked for a living -- doing anything -- would no longer be an amateur. It was done in order to create a class distinction. Now, you tell me how American that is? Not. And I'm British, so this is ironic, isn't it?

"You had to be a man of means, of wealth, in order to participate in sport. But what got me was why did America ever swallow that? That is the most un-American thing I have ever heard of.

"You know what we think an amateur is? It is somebody who is pursing an education as a first priority and who is participating in sport as an avocation. And you know something, if you look up the NCAA definition of amateur, that's what it is.

"This is an American version of amateurism that makes a whole lot more sense than the English version of amateurism. Does money make you a better athlete? No, it's the competitive experience you've had when you're not doing anything but sport. Education has got to be the top priority, athletics has got to be a lower priority, and you cannot do it full time.

"The current system we've got makes a young person think they've got to go to college whether they want to or not. And that's wrong. It's wrong for them and wrong for the institution.

"I'm very excited about the amateurism proposals we've put forward, but it takes a long, long time to understand this and understand it well, and you've got to be able to hear it with an open mind, and I know personally how hard that is because my mind was not open on that issue three years ago.

"I don't know how many times we were asked, 'What would happen if Kobe Bryant decided to enroll in university?'

"Well, Kobe Bryant would be out of his cotton-pickin' mind to leave what he's got in the pros and come and sit on our campus for a year and risk injury.

"Another thing we were very concerned about were students who had done nothing to enhance their competitive advantage and were forever losing their eligibility by signing a contract.

"I certainly made mistakes in judgment when I was young, but I don't think I was ever forever penalized for them, and that's what we've been doing. And it's all based on these somewhat illogical amateurism rules."