The men's subcommittee of the recently created Division I Basketball Issues Committee has garnered the lion's share of attention because of an immediate need to rectify the no-longer-palatable men's summer recruiting environment.

The other half of the Basketball Issues Committee -- the women's subcommittee -- hasn't attracted that kind of spotlight, which in some ways is just how that group wants it.

Born from the basketball issues reform package approved in April 2000, the Basketball Issues Committee was created last fall to monitor issues specific to the sport and provide in-depth analysis and recommendations as necessary. The men's subcommittee was busy from the get-go on developing an alternative recruiting calendar, something it was told to do by the Division I Board of Directors, but the women's group has enjoyed a more preemptive role than one of crisis management.

"We want to make sure we have the kinds of safeguards in place so that we don't get in the position that the men are in now of trying to fix a problem," said Rebecca Stafford, president at Monmouth University and chair of the women's subcommittee.

Part of why the women's subcommittee isn't in the position that the men's subcommittee is stems from a difference in exposure and revenue between men's and women's basketball. While the women's subcommittee wants to boost both for the women's game, it is trying to avoid the problems that go with it -- increased infractions cases, negative recruiting influences and growing infringement upon student-athletes.

But preserving the current "innocence" of the game and promoting the sport while avoiding the trappings that come with money and exposure is a highwire act at best.

"The immediate temptation is to try and duplicate the wonderful success of the men's game," said subcommittee member Patty Viverito, senior associate commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference. "But it's going to take quite a bit of diligence for us to make some wise choices about how we emulate that success, which is easy to say but harder to do."

The women's game currently is enjoying unprecedented success. The Women's Final Four is an annual sellout and more and more cities are vying for a chance to host the event. Regular-season attendance is at a record level, and more games are being picked up by television networks than ever before.

"Part of the wonder of March Madness on the men's side is that a handful of Cinderellas invariably emerge that capture the hearts of everyone in the basketball community, while for the most part, the women's game has made the selection committee look like geniuses in that they can pick accurately through the lower seeds."

That lack of parity is one of the issues that has risen to the forefront of the subcommittee's agenda. Another is how to encourage institutions to devote the same kinds of resources they do to their men's teams. An early suggestion on the latter is the idea of revenue sharing based on women's basketball standing in addition to men's basketball standing, but Viverito said the subcommittee knows that's a slippery slope.

"Some people feel that the cause of the success on the men's side is the incredible financial incentive to be good, and then absent that financial incentive, are there schools that are willing to devote the same resources to the women as to the men?" she said. "Therein are the horns of the dilemma."

And as for increasing parity in game, one idea that has been floated is that of scholarship reduction, but that, too, has pros and cons.

"Scholarship reduction has a way of changing the status quo," Viverito said. "But at the same time, scholarships are a precious commodity and not something you walk away from without a whole lot of thought."

The subcommittee has met once since its formation and has determined the following issues as its priorities: marketing and promotion of the women's game, television and the championship; quality of the game; student-athlete welfare; and recruiting. The subcommittee plans to divide into focus groups to initiate discussion in those categories before bringing recommendations back to the full committee in April.

And while such a timeline might be considered a luxury, Stafford said the group wants to take advantage of it before a crisis develops.

"We'd rather start out by preventing some of those problems."