ELON, North Carolina -- A panel of individuals who are positioned to evaluate the state of intercollegiate athletics generally agreed that reform efforts are making a difference but that the forces of excessive commercialism continue to be an ongoing source of concern.

Elon University hosted the September 4 discussion, entitled "Intercollegiate Athletics: Is Reform Working?" The participants were NCAA President Myles Brand, Wake Forest University President Thomas Hearn, ESPN basketball analyst Len Elmore, North Carolina State University women's basketball coach Kay Yow and Southern Conference Commissioner Danny Morrison. William Friday, former president of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and co-chair of the 1991 Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, served as moderator.

Brand emphasized that athletics reform is far from complete and that the enterprise continues to be tested. "The good news is that we're passing the test," he said, noting that institutions now have a better understanding about how athletics should relate to the overall academic mission. He cited recent "outbursts of outrageous behavior" by coaches and some student-athletes but noted that universities throughout the country have responded swiftly and assertively to the problems.

Brand also said that basketball coaches have voiced collective concern about recent prominent cases of misbehavior. "Thousands of coaches do a remarkably good job," Brand said, "but a few bad actors can give college sports a bad name, just as the action of a few priests can give religion a bad name."

Elmore, who was a top basketball player at the University of Maryland, College Park, endorsed Division I's new progress-toward-degree standards but, citing his own experience, emphasized the need to make certain that educational opportunity is not denied to those from underprivileged backgrounds who can acquire an education if given a chance.

"We also need advocacy of what is right about college athletics," Elmore said. "Young people in high school are getting the wrong messages. We need effective marketing of what it means to be a student-athlete."

Hearn, who served with Friday on the original Knight Commission, characterized the ongoing struggles within college athletics as no less than a cultural war. "Historically, there was a clear expectation that sports were good and that college athletics was the capstone of competition," he said. "Now we have a different culture, which is professional sports, which is a business." As young people look more to professional sports, Hearn said the intrinsic values of sport are being diminished, which is "something we have to manage constructively going forward."

In that regard, Elmore suggested that conferences band together to align themselves against excessive commercialism, perhaps starting by agreeing not to begin contests at 10 p.m. for the sake of television.

"We have to have a mindset that we are about education," Yow said. "But our mindset is that we're a business. We need to separate from what is a business. High schools are trying to be like us and elementary schools are trying to be like them."

NABC calls for coaches summit

The board of directors of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) has requested a mandatory summit of all NCAA Division I men's head basketball coaches in response to a series of scandals in men's basketball programs that have occurred over the past six months.

About 327 head basketball coaches are being asked to convene at Chicago's O'Hare Airport Hyatt Regency Hotel October 15.

The summit will focus on accountability and ethical conduct of coaches at all levels of NCAA basketball competition, but specifically at the Division I level. "As the association for collegiate basketball coaches and guardians of the game, we have a responsibility to the game, the players, the fans and to ourselves to ensure the utmost integrity of our sport," said Jim Haney, NABC executive director.

NABC President Kelvin Sampson, head coach at the University of Oklahoma, said he hopes that the summit will provide "a basis for our coaches and our association to move forward toward greater integrity in our sport."

NCAA President Myles Brand acknowledged and applauded the NABC for tackling tough matters head-on. "It demonstrates coaches' commitment to ensuring the integrity of not only college basketball, but intercollegiate athletics," Brand said.

The NABC is so serious about summit attendance that it will remove ticket privileges for the 2004 Men's Final Four for coaches who do not attend.