Mike Bianchi, columnist
Orlando Sentinel

Discussing recently approved legislation that would allow college football games to be televised on Friday nights:

"The major conferences have shut the smaller leagues out of network TV contracts, lucrative bowl bids and, most recently, tried to squeeze them out of the NCAA basketball tournament. The smaller leagues are doing what they can for exposure for survival. And if it means playing on Friday night, then so be it.

"But how long do you think the SEC and Big Ten will let the smaller conferences have exclusive TV rights to Friday night? If there is money to be made, you'd better believe the big dogs will soon come sniffing around.

"Now that the NCAA has broken the tradition of Fridays being reserved for high schools, Saturdays for colleges and Sundays for the pros, what's to stop the NFL from playing regularly on Saturdays? Wouldn't that be vigilante justice? OK, Joe College, let's see how many networks sign on to show Ole Miss-Arkansas or Duke-Wake Forest if the NFL becomes a Saturday option."

Recruiting international athletes

Harvey Glance, track and cross country coach
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Chronicle of Higher Education

"I just want athletes who are ready to compete at a high level. You can no longer wait to develop athletes. If you're not coming in at a certain level, you're wasting a scholarship for two years."

Mark Wetmore, track and cross country coach
University of Colorado, Boulder
Chronicle of Higher Education

"International student-athletes displace domestic student-athletes whose parents have paid taxes to the United States for many, many years and who might later develop into Olympians for the United States. Almost all of the final eight (in the women's 100-meter dash at the Sydney Games) attended American universities, and all but the one or two Americans displaced American athletes to get to those universities."

Amateurism

Chris Plonsky, senior associate director of athletics
University of Texas at Austin
Houston Chronicle

"Right now, tuition, fees, books, and room and board do not cover extraneous expenses, and we all know there are extraneous expenses."

NACDA associations

C. William Byrne, athletics director
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Athletics Administration

"The athletics department budget (used to be) part of the university's budget and there was not a lot of pressure from the institution to generate resources. But, as times changed and university budgets shrank, more and more responsibility for the financial well-being of the athletics department came under the realm of the athletics directors. That is when we started hiring fund-raisers, adding marketing groups, licensing products, creating ticket priority systems, etc. Of necessity, those various professions created their own professional organizations and athletics directors would pick up the newspaper and read that 'Association XYZ' was taking positions on NCAA legislation and making comments on how the athletics industry was to be run that may have been counter to NACDA and institutions' best interests."