For proof that the NCAA is a higher education organization, one needn't look beyond the amount of time Division I spends studying.

Even the governance structure itself is under review from an ad hoc team of presidents that is surveying the membership on the health of the system adopted in 1997.

Oh, and the Board of Directors recently appointed a group to tackle what may be the mother of all studies -- an ambitious review of reforms to harness "fundamental" issues in big-time Division I sports, including academic and fiscal integrity.

Throw in research initiatives, which go hand in hand with study, and you've got a full bookcase. The NCAA research staff has received an unprecedented number of requests -- more than 100 in the past two years -- to survey constituencies, crunch numbers and compile data.

To be sure, the hours Division I athletics administrators have spent putting their heads together in the four years since restructuring would be enough to earn a college degree. But can you cross a line where study never ends and action never begins? Some might say that needs to be -- well -- studied, but others defend the way Division I is doing business.

Bob Lawless, who chairs the NCAA Executive Committee and is a member of the Division I Board of Directors, has been around the NCAA structure long enough to know a delay tactic when he sees one, and he said the study route isn't one.

"In most of these studies, there are immediate concerns that can be addressed and entered into the structure more quickly instead of sending them to a committee whose docket is already quite full," he said. "The studies actually are the opposite of a delay."

Lawless, president of the University of Tulsa, said the delay comes when a committee that is ill-equipped to deal with a specific issue gets bogged down. Studies, though, employ a small group of experts that can more efficiently funnel the issue where it needs to go. "Most committees have a broad outlook with a number of issues before them," he said. "The studies have a narrow focus that can be evaluated by a specifically named group."

An early example -- and perhaps the best -- of a study group since the NCAA restructured in 1997 is the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues. Appointed in September 1998, the group was charged with "cleaning up" the summer recruiting calendar and addressing issues such as falling graduation rates in men's basketball and players leaving college early for the pros.

Though there was not a consensus, even among the study group members, as to the strength of the package (some thought the proposals were not tough enough), the original package may have been tougher than the one eventually adopted a year later. Of the 13 proposals, only one was adopted in its original form (restricting midyear transfers from eligibility until the ensuing academic year). Three others were approved after being significantly amended, four were defeated and four were rendered moot because of the adoption of alternative proposals.

"In the end," Lawless said, "not many of those original proposals were adopted, but had it not been for the study group, there would have been a lot of deliberation and the package would not have come forward as rapidly as it did through Shaw's committee."

But Shaw, who now chairs the men's subcommittee of the Basketball Issues Committee, a spinoff from the original working group, said he thought the package actually became stronger as it moved through the process.

"The fact that it was changed was to be expected," he said. "Study groups are effective only if their recommendations then go through the normal process. So while the package was changed, I would have to say that the changes made after we finished our initial work were good."

Amateurism's dilemma

Division I's amateurism deregulation package has followed a similar channel. After being cultivated within the Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet's Agents and Amateurism Subcommittee for two years, the package came before the Council for the first time in October 1999. The six-proposal package was controversial, as was to be expected. After all, the NCAA has struggled with what constitutes amateur status for nearly a century.

Knowing that, the Council tabled the package as a way to "provide meaningful discussion" at a Convention forum. When concerns were expressed there, the subcommittee and cabinet amended the package, principally to eliminate the one-year "grace period" that prospects had to participate in organized competition, and instead offer a year-for-year trade-off between participation and eligibility. The Council deliberated over the revised package in October 2000 and sent it out for membership comment "without taking a position." Another forum at the 2001 Convention triggered more -- and louder -- concerns from the membership, so in February 2001, the cabinet amended the package again. When the Board finally took a hard look at the package two months ago, it asked the cabinet to "repackage" the proposals in a series of alternative groupings. Now the proposals aren't expected to be voted on until April 2002.

Christine Grant, former director of women's athletics at the University of Iowa who has overseen the amateurism package since its inception, believes that some of the amendments have been good, but she is hoping that any package that is passed is as close to the original as possible.

"The revised organized-competition rule has been improved," said Grant, referring to the latest amendment that would require prospects who participate in more than one year of organized competition before college enrollment to forfeit all college eligibility. "I feel comfortable with that amendment."

But now the package has been divided into three alternatives, one of which includes all of the proposals, one that excludes the proposal allowing compensation for participation, and one that also excludes allowing prospects to accept prize money. Of the three, Grant favors the first.

"But I understand how long it takes for people to try to sever the link of amateurism with money," she said. "I know, because I've gone through it, the subcommittee has gone through it and the cabinet has gone through it.

Fix first, implement later

Some would say that study offers the kind of reflection time on significant core issues to which Grant refers. Under the old Convention format, once an issue reached the floor, the outcome could be influenced by the persuasion of an impassioned speaker.

"We came up with a better result in summer recruiting after giving everyone a chance to be heard and be clear about what the concerns were. If that had gone to Convention and summer recruiting was done away with because of five votes, that could have been a disaster," Orleans said.

Similarly with amateurism, a package that would either have been passed or killed on the Convention floor took on a different shape after study. Whether it was for better or worse is the question.

"In that regard, the current structure brings complex issues forward, and for the Council to be totally prepared on first review, particularly on a divisive issue, is probably not reasonable. And does it slow the process down? You bet. But they are complex enough and core enough issues that they demand that kind of attention."

Grant, too, mentioned that she would have enjoyed a debate of amateurism on the Convention floor.

"I really believe that when you have a group of people who have done their homework, you can get many different perspectives that you alone had not thought of," Grant said. "I would have welcomed the opportunity to have real debate on the amateurism issue."

Grant said, though, that if the Convention format still existed in Division I and the amateurism package had come up for a vote this past January, it would likely have been defeated. "People just had not given it very much thought. I was surprised," she said.

Betsy Stephenson, a Management Council member from the Pacific-10 Conference, said study offers the structure a way to examine first and implement later, rather than vice ver-
sa, which she said often happened under the Convention format.

"We used to make rules and then deal with much of the implementation by interpretation," said the associate athletics director from the University of California, Los Angeles. "We're making more informed decisions this way because it gives us a chance to consider the interpretive aspects of the proposals before we pass them."

More to come

The studies show no signs of slowing down. The most recent, and perhaps most significant, is the Board's appointment of a group that will identify a reform agenda to guide the structure in the coming years. That announcement came from the Board's meeting two months ago and was on the heels of the Knight Commission's call for big-time college sports to tighten their belts.

Ohio State University President Brit Kirwan, who chairs the Board, said the appointment of the study group wasn't so much a response to the Knight Commission as it was a response to "concerns from a number of sources, both internal and external."

Kirwan has asked the new group, which will be chaired by Francis Lawrence, the president of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, to develop "a conceptual and visionary framework" that will guide the Board's strategic-planning efforts in the coming years.

It is possible, even likely, that that study group will appoint others, particularly to deal with financial issues that emerge as a result of still another study -- the effort to determine forces that drive spending trends in big-time sports.

For now, the structure appears comfortable with that mode of operation. And so far, study groups have not gone outside the structure or advocated bypassing the process in any way. That essential link seems to be working well, according to Shaw.

"If study groups assume they're going to use the structure once they've finished with their work," Shaw said, "you haven't weakened the structure in the process, but you've brought initiatives to the table and dealt with them in a much more expeditious fashion than you otherwise would."

For Council, 'no position' doesn't suggest 'no idea'

The Division I Management Council has initially approved two key pieces of legislation without taking a stance, which raises an interesting question: Is it OK to approve legislation that you don't necessarily support?

The legislative process implemented in 1997 called for the Council to conduct an initial review of proposals, and those that were "initially approved" would be distributed to the membership for comment.

But in 1999, the Council "passed" on the basketball package. Precedent had been set just months earlier when the Board of Directors reviewed the basketball package for the first time and "endorsed the substance of the working group's recommendations" without approving the package. The Council then moved the proposals forward that October "without taking a position on the package as a whole or on any individual proposal."

That worked so well that the Council did it again with the amateurism package, first tabling it in 1999 to "generate meaningful discussion" and then moving it without a position a year later.

"I've not had a sense that the Council is reluctant to take a position," Harris said, "but I've come to appreciate that on significant issues, there's a willingness to get a reaction from the membership first."

"That's in contrast with the old Convention setting," he said. "I can recall several occasions where an impassioned speech or two could sway the number of votes needed to send an issue up or down, all driven in large part by the emotion of the speaker who held people in rapt attention. This current approach affords the membership the opportunity to engage, though not in the traditional large meeting format."

Ellen Perry, an associate athletics director at Pennsylvania State University who represents the Big Ten Conference on the Council, said the group isn't in the habit of not taking a stance on just any issue. The cases on which the Council passes clearly are the slippery slopes.

Opportunity to get reaction

"The thing about sending proposals out for comment without a position is that it's reflective of getting comment that's sound enough and representative enough to feel comfortable taking a stance," she said. "Sending it out without position is an attempt to get some reaction from the general populous. If it comes back without comment, either they're asleep or it's a sound piece of legislation and we go forward."

Ivy Group Executive Director Jeff Orleans said the referral simply reflects that an issue is complicated enough not to have earned a consensus within the membership.

"As Council members, we do have both the desire and capacity to lead," he said, "but on the other hand, we are representative, and where our constituents don't have a clear consensus, maybe the way we lead is to make it clear that we don't have that consensus. In a political sense, that is leadership. Otherwise, we're just back to having votes on the Convention floor where a one-vote majority swings the ship."

The amateurism package, he said, is a prime example. "It would not have been fair to the membership having had the level of discussion there had been to simply say we disagree with this or we don't think it's well thought out," Orleans said. "On the other hand, we had a serious set of questions that needed to be answered, so the only alternative we saw to simply delaying it was to keep the process going but to make clear that we were not ready as a group to endorse it."

In the end, Council members believe that fishing for a stance before taking one themselves isn't a disservice to the process, but a service to the membership.

"We're better off getting it right than getting it done at the close of business," Harris said. "We have an obligation in transitioning from the old Convention format to be certain that the membership has the opportunity to weigh in on issues, whether we've already taken a stance on them or not."

-- Gary T. Brown