CBS assumes NCAA corporate-partner rights from Host

CBS Sports announced recently that it has amended its agreement with Host Communications and has assumed all corporate-partner marketing sales and servicing responsibilities for the NCAA, including television requirements for the Division I Men's Basketball Championship and 65 other NCAA championships.

In addition, CBS will continue to administer radio and Internet rights for all NCAA championships programming. The announcement was made jointly by Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports, and Host Chief Executive Officer W. James Host. The NCAA approved the restructured business relationship.

"The size, scope and breadth of CBS and Viacom put us at a greater advantage in marketing the NCAA championships through our corporate-partner program," McManus said. "The new agreement with Host is designed to maximize our individual strengths, and we're confident it will lead to more cohesive, focused and efficient marketing initiatives."

Host will continue under a two-year agreement to administer NCAA domestic and international merchandise licensing programs; publication of game programs for each of the NCAA's 87 national championships; and the production of Hoop City fan festivals at the NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Championships.

Host has had a relationship with the NCAA since 1975, and it had administered the Association's corporate-marketing rights since the inception of the program. Host also has published NCAA championship programs since 1978.

CBS Sports has been the exclusive network broadcaster of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship since 1982.

CAA visiting teams have academic home

Members of the Colonial Athletic Association have agreed to extend visiting academic privileges to athletics teams competing on their campuses.

This action will provide unique access for visiting teams to institutional libraries, computer labs and student-athlete academic centers.

"We fully recognize the tremendous time commitment away from campus our student-athletes make to represent their institutions in competition," said Douglas Bron, James Madison University provost. "The extension of visiting academic privileges and access to academic resource centers on their trip will lessen the impact of time missed from their own campus facilities."

The CAA is believed to be the first Division I conference to formally extend visiting academic privileges and open resource centers to visiting teams.

Title IX advocate dies

U.S. Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink, D-Hawaii, died of viral pneumonia September 28.

An outspoken proponent of Title IX and one of the original supporters of the 1972 legislation, Mink was the keynote speaker for the 2002 NCAA Title IX Seminar in Washington, D.C.

The first minority woman elected to Congress, Mink served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965 to 1976 and again from 1990 to her current term. In 1992, McCall's magazine named her one of the 10 best politicians in Congress.

Mink told attendees of the NCAA Title IX Seminar in May that her political career was launched in response to the discrimination she experienced when medical schools told her that, as a woman, she need not apply.

Nancy Pelosi, D-California, noted that Mink's work will be long remembered.

"By her work and her example, Patsy Mink redefined what is possible for a generation of women and for our daughters," Pelosi said in a statement. "She gave strength to the powerless and voice to the voiceless. Her legacy of justice and equality will live on in classrooms and playing fields around this great nation."

Mink had been running for re-election, representing Hawaii's second district, when she died. Her name will remain on the November 5 ballot. If she wins, the seat will be declared vacant and a special election will be held.

The U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee has recommended renaming the 1972 Title IX amendments after Mink. The full House is expected to consider the measure.

-- Compiled by Kay Hawes

Number crunching

Looking back

 35 years ago

A look back at the September/October 1967 edition of The NCAA News:

The NCAA appoints two special committees to study various aspects of football, including the possibility of a playoff. One is a group to study the feasibility of a National Collegiate Football Championship. The committee, which includes football coach Bear Bryant from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and Eastern College Athletic Conference Commissioner Asa Bushnell, will study an American Football Coaches Association recommendation to have a series of games at the end of the year to determine a champion.

The second group, which includes Big Ten Conference Commissioner William R. Reed, will study preseason practice issues. The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports wants an advance conditioning period before regular practice begins. There also are concerns that the present rule results in inequities as to the number of practice days and sessions available to member institutions because of different starting dates for classes among NCAA schools.

* * *

The NCAA Executive Committee approves a Thursday-Saturday format for regional and national semifinals and finals, effective with the 1969 National Collegiate Basketball Championship. The Executive Committee also reverses an earlier decision and reinstates the trampoline event to the 1968 Gymnastics Championships. A survey conducted by the National Association of College Gymnastics Coaches revealed that 62 percent of the coaches responding favored retention of the event.

* * *

And then there's this from a reverend delivering the invocation at a quarterback club meeting after a recent University of Kentucky football loss: "May our friendship for our coach and his staff be genuine, and without guile, and never the fawning desire to bask in the reflected limelight of publicity when all goes well, but run with the yapping pack when adversity sits above our doors."