Mary Jo Kane, professor
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
The Village Voice

Discussing the differences in the level of infractions between men's and women's sports:

"It will take us eons and eons to get to a point where our culture will allow a woman professional athlete to be a Darryl Strawberry. Women's sports is not about to produce a Jayson Williams. We're not even in the same universe. A little trash-talking is a whole lot different from manslaughter and obstruction of justice.

"I don't want to sound all pious about how women are not supposed to be as corrupt as men. That's a morality argument that does more harm to women than exposure to corruption does. This isn't about women, but about the institution of sport. The issue isn't gender, it's greed."

Tara VanDerveer, head women's basketball coach
Stanford University
The Village Voice

"We're still horse and buggy compared to men's sports. There are definitely pressures in the women's games, but not nearly like those men have. ...

"When men's teams make it to the (basketball) finals, money goes to their conference and their teams. Winning for them is tied to money. The women's tournament doesn't have any such deal.

"As the popularity of the women's game grows, coaches, parents and athletics directors will need to work hard to keep their sport in perspective."

Ellen Staurowsky, sports sociologist
Ithaca College
The Village Voice

"Female athletes have been required to legitimatize themselves as athletes within a value system that says you have to be brutish and willing to do anything to win. Of course women are capable of doing that. So they chase the phantom of legitimacy, and the bar keeps moving. Masculine culture gets hyper-masculinized, and the stakes keep getting higher and higher. Women are constantly in pursuit, and men never turn around to see that women might have something to offer, that they might have some authority. That dynamic doesn't produce what I would call progress."

Academic standards

Robert Sloan, president
Baylor University
Chronicle of Higher Education

"You should not use testing instruments to make a significant life-changing decision for a student based upon a cut score, because the data don't support artificial imposition. When you do that, you start to have a disparate impact among various populations."

C. B. Elder, academic advisor
University of Oklahoma
Chronicle of Higher Education

"The bottom line is that if you're recruiting the kind of kids that are going to get you into the NCAA basketball tournament, the Sweet 16, the Final Four -- a lot of times the kid's priority is basketball. He's driven by competition, not necessarily academic success. And let's face it: There's a large amount of basketball talent coming from a background that is not really geared toward academic success."

Jon Ericson, former provost
Drake University
Athletic Management

"Coaches ought not to be responsible for the academic conduct of their players at all. That's a faculty responsibility. Any time an athlete is on campus who shouldn't be because of academics, that's a reflection on the provost and the deans and the faculty, not the coach."

Jim Copeland, director of athletics
Southern Methodist University
Athletic Management

Discussing ways to develop relationships between faculty and athletics departments:

"One of the places where you find chasms is between faculty members and 'boosters.' I have found when you put them together, they start to realize that neither group has horns, that they both are reasonable and have rational and justifiable points of view. It's usually been very pleasant. What becomes obvious, too, is that most of the people who support our athletics program financially support some part of the university other than athletics, and it becomes almost an epiphany for some of the faculty people to understand that."

Sports sponsorship

Edward Lotterman, columnist
St. Paul Pioneer Press

"So why would a university spend millions on intercollegiate athletics? Should one subsidize programs that involve only a few dozen students but cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? And should funds from 'profitable' sports such as basketball or hockey be used to subsidize ones with substantial costs but few revenues?

"The standard answer to the first question is that collegiate athletics have become deeply embedded in U.S. culture. Many students, and/or their parents, expect a prominent athletics program when they come to a school. Not that most will participate, but they expect athletics as part of the total educational 'package' that they buy.

"People go to college to get an education and also to get a degree. The two are not the same. Education is knowledge and skills. A degree is a mark of status and an entry into certain economic and social networks. A diploma from Texas A&M University or the University of Nebraska means one is an 'Aggie' or a 'Cornhusker.' In Omaha or Houston business circles, that may mean as much as graduating from Tokyo University does in Japan or from Cambridge in England...

"If colleges have a full-blown and winning sports program, it is easier for them to attract students. Full enrollments keep average costs per student down at institutions with high fixed costs, and thus athletics keep per-student expenses lower than they would be otherwise.

"Subsidizing minor sports, such as golf, which attract few participants or spectators, is viewed as part of the same package. To be an attractive school, a university must offer a broad range of sports, not just one or two."