The other half of the story is one with which the great majority of you are familiar. Except for a handful of programs, colleges and universities are spending more than they make with their athletics endeavors. While there may be $4 billion annually in revenue from intercollegiate athletics, higher education within the NCAA is spending about $5.1 billion annually on college sports -- a net deficit of more than a billion dollars and an increase of at least $300 million annually over the last two years.

The revenues and expenses report compiled from data submitted by member schools shows that the number of programs in Division I-A that have revenues remaining after expenses (and excluding institutional support) has fallen from 48 to 40 in the last two years. Adding to the elite status of those 40 programs where revenues exceed expenses is the fact that the average margin has increased from $3.8 million two years ago to $5.3 million today. And the average deficit for the others has increased from $3.3 million to $3.8 million. Divisions II and III aren't exempt from the spending spree. After a decade of modest increases in Division II deficits, the average in 1999 jumped 21 percent for the 1997-99 reporting period and rose above the million-dollar mark for the first time. And while revenue figures are not kept for Division III, expenses for that division jumped 30 percent from 1997 to 1999 -- by far the highest single reporting-period increase since the NCAA has been tracking the numbers.

Two points are clear from the research to date: No program is exempt from rising costs, and the gap in Division I between the "haves" and "have nots" is increasing. What is not so clear is the long-term impact on intercollegiate sports if the financial trends continue, and the feasibility of colleges and universities subsidizing more of their athletics programs.

All this has created what others and I have termed an "arms race," an inevitable spiraling of facility expansion, coaching and administrative salaries, and operation expenses. In all honesty, that probably is too simplistic a characterization. While some positive outcomes have resulted from the growth and investments made in college sports, one has to question whether we have become a victim of our own success.

Manifested generally in Division I, the issue is less an arms race and more a funding dilemma. I believe that the angst most observers have over the rapidly escalating financial concerns in college sports is the tension that is increasing between finding new revenue streams to offset the costs and the impact that pursuing those new streams has on such things as self-sufficiency, competitive equity, academic mission and even diversity hiring. Here's how the dilemma typically plays out.

A funding philosophy in Division I since 1978 has dictated that programs should operate as self-sufficiently as possible. Yet, we've seen the number of programs that break even or better declining from one year to the next. All the rest of the programs are spending at a faster pace than they are generating new revenue streams, and, as already noted, the gap between those with sufficient resources and those without widens with each passing season. As the need for new revenue streams increases, preseason and postseason games and playoffs are added, which puts additional pressure on winning. But winning is affected by a change in competitive equity created by the resources gap.

Suddenly, the "Catch 22" element of the funding dilemma is pandemic.

As the scramble for new revenue sources intensifies and corporations first become targets and then partners with athletics programs, charges of commercialism fall on college sports. The epicenter of such criticism is a disturbance of the folklore notion that college sports, uniquely among higher education's many enterprises, should not depend on corporate America for support. The Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, the media and other critics have called college presidents to task for besmirching the good names of amateurism and higher education with their ties to large corporations. Yet, the rest of higher education pursues commercial dollars; names buildings, research projects, colleges, professorships and programs after those commercial entities; and is praised for partnering with corporate America. But the same behavior model when applied to college athletics is labeled crass over-commercialism. Even the Olympics have successfully engaged corporate America in helping to finance both the Games and preparation for the Games, while college sports is chastised for turning to commercial support.

The funding dilemma -- the very real need in Division I to pay for college sports from sources other than college budgets -- has significantly increased concern that higher education has looked the other way with both recruiting choices that bring prospects to campus with little interest in a degree and the resulting general drift from academic mission. It is even arguably so that this dilemma is part of the cause for intercollegiate athletics' failure to hire diverse coaching and administrative staffs. The pressure to win, to sustain funding sources and to assure success has dampened institutions' willingness to "take chances" with untested coaches and athletics directors of color or who are women.

The real question is whether intercollegiate athletics is still meeting its basic purpose and mission of educating young people to be tomorrow's leaders or whether we have lost our way in attempting to meet today's demands of wins and losses and sold-out arenas.

This funding dilemma is no simple problem. If the answers were easy, we would not have the concern about overspending that has plagued college sports since the beginning of the NCAA nearly a century ago. Exploring this and other issues for Division I is a task force of the Board of Directors. A report from the task force, including research and analysis by leading economists on key financial data, will be available in October or November. The task force has been charged with examining a number of areas of concern, including a comprehensive study of economic factors in college sports. The goal is to develop data that will help CEOs make decisions based on a history of spending behaviors over time for a broad range of institutions.

In the meantime, as individual members of the larger NCAA association, each institution has the autonomy -- and responsibility -- to set individual financial policies. But where does reasonable investment in athletics as an educational component, entertainment for the university community or even a development tool end and misdirected fiscal folly begin? Are the expenses of colleges' sports aligned with the mission of an institution's athletics programs? Are our athletics budgets aligned with our broad-based programs or do the majority of our resources go to elite programs? Are more new dollars allocated to athletics than any other aspect of the campus? Is responding to the funding dilemma as simple as making athletics live within the university's means? I urge CEOs to consider answers to these questions for their campuses, and to find the will to act where the answers suggest fiscal policy different from that currently in place.

This essay has largely explored issues around the financial behaviors in Division I because that is where the greatest body of relevant data -- and many would say the greatest problems -- exists. But make no mistake, how the Joneses and those trying to keep up with the Joneses spend and seek new revenue to support their spending habits is part of the funding dilemma for every institution and every level of college sports.