The current NCAA branding initiative must deal with conflicting forces that have been at work since the creation of the Association almost 100 years ago.

University of Tulsa President Bob Lawless, former chair of the NCAA Executive Committee, said that the public always has seen the NCAA as two separate organizations -- the "good citizen" that sponsors championships and the "bad cop" that enforces rules. But Lawless said that even people who understood the NCAA's role in enforcing rules have missed the bigger picture.

"The end no longer is the games themselves, or the rules that are enforced to make sure the games are fair," Lawless said. "It's the educational opportunities for the students who participate in college athletics. Intercollegiate athletics is the means for that educational end for almost every student-athlete."

Division I Board of Directors Chair Robert Hemenway, chancellor at the University of Kansas, supports Lawless' point. He said that rules enforcement, and the controversy that comes with it, is a relatively small part of intercollegiate athletics compared to all the positive values that are encapsulated in competition.

"Take the building of character, for instance, and check it against what people say about their athletics experiences," Hemenway said. "Ask them what it was about their athletics participation that made them a better person -- what they learned through competition or what they learned by playing within the rules? Most people would say their character was enhanced by their competition, through teamwork, dedication, loyalty and learning how to win and lose gracefully, not just because they observed the rules.

"Those values are of greater significance than the fairly rudimentary and simple-minded value of having to play by the rules."

Still, rules enforcement is the Association's most visible flash point. When NCAA members don't play by the rules, the image of the Association as a whole often suffers. A recent example may be found in the rapid succession of alleged academic-fraud violations at several Division I men's basketball programs earlier this month. The combination of the number of programs involved, the seriousness of the violations and the consequences (withdrawal from postseason play, a university president's resignation) that came with them cast the entire Association in a bad light, even though the problems represented just a small fraction of the NCAA membership.

The cases all appeared to be cases of institutional misbehavior, not NCAA regulatory overbearance. Still, a number of media representatives characterized the incidents as examples of "the NCAA" being out of control. One college president told a major newspaper that "if we don't change the NCAA, it will be a pox on our house."

The episode demonstrates perhaps the biggest challenge for the branding initiative: If the Association is to align itself with the purity of higher education, then the members must act in a manner that fits the role.

And the vast majority of them do. NCAA President Brand, in fact, has made advocating the positives of intercollegiate athletics one part of his two-prong platform. The other prong is reform, which already is gaining presidential momentum in Division I.

The branding initiative also may be challenged by high-profile coaches, student-athletes or administrators who stridently take the NCAA to task. When coaches use the bully pulpit to challenge an eligibility issue or question a penalty, the NCAA's image is stressed, even though the coach's institution may have played a part in establishing the rule in question.

"Many times, the people who complain are the people who help make the rules," said Kent State University President Carol Cartwright, chair of the NCAA Executive Committee. "In the heat of the moment, they may say something that is inappropriate, but it doesn't do anyone any good to focus on them as individuals. We need to have some standard response language that says this type of behavior, regardless of who does it, is one that our members have said is inappropriate.

"If you're a member of this organization, you can't have it both ways. If you want to stand on the outside and lob criticism in, that's one thing, but if you're inside, you need to focus on improving."

Tulsa President Lawless said the NCAA's make-up adds to the challenge. Because the Association is a membership organization, committee composition changes annually, which can lead to different verdicts or outcomes on similar situations.

"In those instances, the NCAA can be seen as an organization that's arbitrary in some of its decisions, when in fact the decisions are made by people coming from institutions that constitute the membership," he said. "Still, if a president -- in looking at the rules and knowing what was done -- believes the sanction is appropriate, then he or she shouldn't be siding with the person complaining about the penalty. That president needs to be saying, 'Hey, this is what the rules say, this is what happened and the punishment fit the crime.'

"There may be times, though, when the president down deep believes that the adjudication was not appropriate. We can't make a person say something other than what they believe."

Such talk can weaken the brand, especially on a local level. If it happens at enough locations over enough time, it becomes difficult to sell the NCAA's attributes.

But Kansas Chancellor Hemenway said such differences of opinion should be expected and that the NCAA brand can withstand them.

"You may have someone criticize the NCAA in the same way that someone might criticize the defense department, the U.S. Senate or the National Endowment for the Humanities. But that doesn't diminish the basic identity of the NCAA," he said.

-- Gary T. Brown