The staff and the membership appear to have different attitudes about the role of the staff and the effectiveness of the staff in dealing with its responsibilities.

The Ad Hoc Review Committee Report, which was mailed to the membership in late May, contained research that illustrates the conflicting perspectives on the role of staff. The primary purpose of the report was to query NCAA constituencies about how they believe the NCAA is functioning under the governance structure adopted in 1997.

One set of questions related to the importance of the staff "identifying and framing issues that face intercollegiate athletics." Of the responding staff members, 79 percent said it was "very important" for the staff to meet that responsibility. The membership, however, saw the issue differently; of the athletics administrators who were surveyed (CEOs, senior woman administrators, athletics directors, faculty athletics representatives, conference commissioners and coaches), not more than 50 percent of any subset said it was "very important" for the staff to identify and frame issues.

The staff was equally comfortable with the notion of "offering alternative solutions to issues" (73 percent said it was "very important"), but the membership liked that notion even less. Only 28 percent (coaches) to 42 percent (athletics directors) of those surveyed said that "offering alternative solutions" is a very important staff role.

The information is interesting because of how it relates -- or does not relate -- to an Executive Committee position on staff that was developed in 1999. In establishing Association priorities, the Executive Committee identified a more prominent role for the national office.

"We saw that we needed to send some direction to the NCAA president and his staff that the staff role is one of carrying out the priorities of the Association," Charles Wethington, former chair of the Executive Committee, said in the January 3, 2000, issue of The NCAA News. "We really believe that the action the Executive Committee took made it more possible for the president and his staff to ensure that the actions they were taking were in line with the priorities of the Association."

President Cedric W. Dempsey said he anticipated several years ago that institutional CEOs would want more leadership from the staff.

"Historically, the national office has been a task-oriented, service-minded group of employees," Dempsey said. "I could begin to see the need for (a) different skill set in 1994 in anticipation of presidents seeing the national office as an area from which more leadership should be provided, while not losing the service and task component that we had."

But how much do the presidents buy in to the concept of staff in a leadership role? In the Ad Hoc Committee Report, their rate of "very important" responses to various staff responsibilities was not remarkably different from those of other athletics administrators. And when it came to rating the effectiveness of the staff, the presidents dished out the lowest grades of any group.

However, one can read the presidents' response on staff ineffectiveness to mean that the staff should be doing more than it is. Thomas C. Hansen, Pacific-10 Conference commissioner and a former staff member, said he is convinced that the CEOs expect the staff to play a more prominent role than in the past, although he doesn't know if the rest of the membership is on board with that expectation.

"That's a point of conflict between the presidents and most of the practitioners of Association business," Hansen said. "They don't see that (staff) role changing as the presidents clearly do. The presidents want the NCAA president and senior staff to follow their lead and work with them to develop policy. Practitioners want to be instrumental in developing policy and then have staff carry it out."

Jeffrey H. Orleans, executive director of the Ivy Group, echoed Hansen's view that the Executive Committee and membership need clearer agreement about the staff's role.

"It's kind of like the English civil servant culture, where you served by helping the political appointees understand where they needed to make leadership decisions and equipping them to make decisions -- but the elected representatives made the decisions," Orleans said. "What doesn't seem clear to the Executive Committee is that when it tells the staff 'to lead,' it can be infringing on decisions that belong to the membership. The Committee doesn't serve the president by inducing him to be outside that role on its behalf.

"On the other hand, staff does need to be able to tell the Board or Council that 'you're ducking the issue' or 'you haven't even thought of this issue, but we have.' "

Dan Beebe, commissioner of the Ohio Valley Conference and also a former staff member, said the key to staff success in the restructured NCAA may rest in knowing when to let go.

"The staff's job is to think about things that can improve the enterprise and perhaps advocate for those changes, but then rely upon members to vote the way they feel it needs to go," he said. "I tell my staff this as well. Don't get so wrapped up in your ideas that you can't accept it when the membership disagrees."