Like many of you, I look forward to the start of the new year with high expectations and aspirations for my family, my institution and college sports in general. Like you, too, I look at areas within myself, within my institution and within intercollegiate athletics that need improving, and I resolve to make those areas priorities in the upcoming year.

I will not share my personal resolution, but you can be sure my diet and exercise are priorities this year. But I will share an area in athletics that certainly needs improving.

During the past year, the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee (MOIC) has collected demographic data on the administrative and coaching staffs at our institutions. The MOIC will provide the membership with its biannual Race Demographics of NCAA Institutions' Athletics Personnel Report this spring. Unfortunately, even as we go forward in 2002, we don't expect that the demographics of staff in the report will adequately reflect the demographics of student-athletes.

Of note, as it is every year at this time, is football. This is the time of year during which many football coaching changes are made, and search committees at institutions in all three NCAA divisions begin gleaning data about who might take their teams to the proverbial next level. Unfortunately, the early returns show that this year may be just like previous years in which few minority head coaches were hired.

The lack of diversity in the college football coaching ranks is not a new issue. Every winter, it seems, the issue gains attention in the media and among intercollegiate athletics groups. This year is no different. However, the MOIC, a group for which I serve as chair, is committed to changing the outcome, hopefully very soon.

The MOIC has spent the past year working on issues of diversity in Division I football for the NCAA Football Oversight Committee. We have asked chief executive officers, directors of athletics, and head and assistant football coaches what they believe to be the barriers

to opportunities for minority football coaches in NCAA football, and we appreciate the more than 1,000 responses we received. Over the next several weeks, we will conduct focus groups composed of football coaches and athletics directors to further discuss those perceptions in the hiring and advancement process. This information will be used to formulate recommendations that will be submitted to the Football Oversight Committee on this important issue.

But the MOIC isn't stopping there. To assist CEOs and directors of athletics faced with coaching personnel changes after the 2001 season, the MOIC, in conjunction with the Black Coaches Association and the Minority Opportunities Athletic Association, developed a list of minority candidates from both the college and professional ranks who have demonstrated the coaching, administrative and leadership qualities necessary for success at the Division I level. Each organization stood ready to personally assist as candidate pools were identified.

How successful were our efforts? Well, just like diet and exercise, diversity in the coaching ranks remains an area for improvement in the year ahead.

Our goal, as it has been for several years, is to increase the visibility of qualified candidates and to diversify the applicant pool. Once that is accomplished, it stands to reason that those qualified candidates eventually will emerge as head coaches, and the dominos will begin to fall from there.

But providing data or lists isn't always enough. As we gear up for the new year, each institution must resolve to heighten its appreciation for the advantages of diverse coaching staffs. While more than 50 percent of student-athletes playing Division I football are minority, fewer than 3 percent of football programs (excluding historically black colleges and universities) were headed by minority coaches in the 1999 season.

We cannot call ourselves leaders in intercollegiate athletics today and use the same hiring procedures -- the short list, the old-boys' network -- as in the past. We cannot propose that our student-athletes are our top concern today, yet fail to provide them with the richness of diverse staffs and, therefore, diverse learning experiences on and off the field. In short, we cannot and should not do business in 2002 as we have since 1992.

That will take a commitment from each one of use -- from college presidents to athletics directors to boards of trustees -- to embrace a new way of thinking.

If you resolve to prepare student-athletes for citizenship and leadership in a dynamic and diverse society, as the NCAA Executive Committee has in establishing one of the Association's priorities, what resolutions will you make in 2002 to ensure that old ways don't follow your campus into the new year?

And if you make those resolutions, maybe this time next year we won't be reading about why college football can't seem to meet the age-old diversity challenge.

Eugene Marshall Jr. is the director of athletics at Ramapo College and chairs the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee.