That "bad guy" image is an albatross that the NCAA staff probably wears more than the membership, particularly since the general public more often than not believes the staff is the NCAA.

Even the membership uses that excuse when it needs to. The national office often is a scapegoat when times are tough. For example, one high-profile football coach in the 1970s was tired of having boosters access his sidelines during football games. He encouraged legislation to impose restrictions, then blamed the NCAA when he told the boosters they couldn't roam the sidelines anymore. The old Communications Committee knew that the coach planned to criticize the NCAA for the policy once it was approved but thought the Association's role was to provide that sort of cover for the membership when it could.

The enforcement and student-athlete reinstatement staffs feel the unwarranted "bad guy" heat most frequently. E-mail and telephone lashings funnel into the office after infractions cases. During an eligibility case involving one of his players, one high-profile basketball coach even told a reporter that he wanted to see the staff's faces when he rolled a hand grenade into the national office building. The remark may have been flippant, but it was published.

Indeed, having the public and sometimes the membership give the staff the business is, well, part of the business.

Perhaps no one knows that more than the NCAA's outgoing director of public relations, Wally Renfro, who is hanging up the telephone after 30 years of service, including the last decade as the Association's lead spokesperson. Renfro, who came from sports information roots at his alma mater, Southwest Missouri State University, said the public's image of the NCAA varies according to the times. That image is favorable during NCAA championships, but ugly during the Association's regulatory duties.

"It's fair to say that the CBS contracts over the past dozen years have been an indicator of the incredible rise in popularity of college sports -- and the latest one is a quantum leap," Renfro said. "So you have this national surge in popularity and enjoyment, but our own research tells us that people's knowledge of the NCAA is as flimsy as ever. Most don't even recognize the NCAA as an association."

When rules are enforced or student-athletes are declared ineligible because of an institutional violation, the public -- and often the membership -- needs a scapegoat. In many respects, that's part of the staff's job.

"The public relations challenges the national office faces today are exactly the same as they were then," said Thomas Hansen, who was one of the handful of Byers' staff members in the 1960s. Hansen said he and the rest of the crew did "a lot of everything," but it was Hansen's job to keep the public relations ship afloat.

"The primary conflict for the NCAA is that it is both the public relations agency and the policing agency," Hansen said. "That is compounded by the fact that there are so many different voices within the membership. High-profile coaches can achieve national recognition for their views when they criticize the NCAA, often without having a real good idea of how the Association works or what it has done."

Hansen said constituents sometimes lash out at the NCAA without even knowing that a prominent member of their college or university has been involved in making the decision the person is railing about.

"To me, those are the NCAA's most difficult matters," Hansen said. "So many voices are raised on so many issues, often in opposition, and not infrequently without factual background."

Renfro said those conflicting voices add complexity to the NCAA's Herculean challenge of trying to address everyone's needs as best it can.

"College sports and the NCAA is an enterprise that tries to accommodate an incredible range of needs, agendas and desires -- and do so in a way that you can say there is fair competition," Renfro said. "And because the NCAA has to -- and cannot -- meet all those agendas, the level of trust in the NCAA's ability to do that likely will always be low. That high-interest, low-trust factor puts the NCAA behind from the start. The result is that the Association faces monumental perception issues."

Those issues haven't changed in the last 50 years, and may not in the next 50.