University professors once ruled the NCAA.

In the early 1900s, college faculties took charge of unruly, unregulated -- and oftentimes unsafe -- varsity sports and firmly established athletics as a respectable component of the world's most far-reaching system of higher education. They accomplished the feat by banding together as an association -- an organization that ultimately came to be known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

But respectability brought bigger crowds in stadiums and greater revenues and ultimately a need for full-time athletics administrators unburdened by the distractions of teaching classes and doing research.

Athletics directors, and over time a growing retinue of assistants, assumed responsibility for the college sports enterprise, and in time that responsibility brought those administrators greater authority. Meanwhile, the faculty role in college athletics remained important, but the faculty voice became less authoritative -- a change that was reflected in NCAA governance, as fewer and fewer faculty athletics representatives served in top leadership positions.

Recent concern about universities' loss of control over athletics helped prompt another action, the 1997 restructuring of the NCAA, that arguably is as important as the steps taken by faculty in the early days of American college sports. But unlike at the founding, when faculty took charge, the modern Association voted to assign authority to university presidents.

The action offers great promise for re-establishing athletics as an integral part of higher education, and it also is sparking a redefinition of the roles of key players in athletics governance -- not least, the niche that faculty will occupy.

"I don't know that we have arrived at what that niche is, any more than anyone else in the process. There's still a lot of struggling that's going on, and it still hasn't settled just yet," said Percy Bates of the University of Michigan, who recently has been the most visible faculty member in NCAA governance as the first faculty athletics representative to serve as chair of the Division I Management Council.

The foremost leaders among faculty, officers in the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association as well as those who hold posts in the restructured Association, say they are working to rebuild their influence on campuses, in conferences and in NCAA governance. They also are working to retain, and in some cases regain, authority in the areas of academic reform and student-athlete welfare.

Much of the "struggling" Bates referred to surrounds the new NCAA governance structure, particularly in Division I.

The Division I Management Council's recent adoption of an annual legislative cycle came in response to frustration expressed by faculty athletics representatives and other groups about the difficulty of tracking legislation and expressing opinions about proposals during the previous two-cycle system.

"FARA has not taken a position on any (Division I) legislation in the new governance structure because it's been so difficult to find when and where to establish a position," said former FARA President David Goldfield of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. "We need to do a better job of that, and I'm hopeful that by going to one legislative cycle, we might be able to time our responses a little better and therefore inform our individual members."

Providing a platform

But faculty leaders concede the new governance structure is only part of the problem and that any moves to revive influence and regain authority must come from within faculty ranks.

"As a faculty person who's been actively involved, I've never shared the view that the current structure was not working," Bates said. "I think the struggle we have is with any willingness to leave the old and go with the new."

"Given the structure, we need to do a better job being more influential in our conferences," Goldfield said. "That's just the way it is."

Whether it's Division I, where conferences play the key role in forming policy in the Association, or Divisions II and III, where each institution casts its own vote, faculty desiring a greater role in NCAA governance need a platform from which to work -- and FARA is striving to provide it.

"I think faculty involvement is evolving, and I intend for it to continue to evolve during the year that I'm FARA president," said Ed Streb of Rowan University, who recently was elected the organization's leader.

"I'm going to push to see to it that we start speaking as a collective group and that we start taking a leadership position on issues like academic reform," he said.

That will be a significant change in direction for the organization. "Anyone who has worked with faculty knows that it is difficult to find a collective voice or gain consensus," said former FARA President Diane Husic of East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. "Thus, FARA always has been reluctant to take official positions on issues -- a mistake, in my opinion."

Husic believes FARA must move beyond the organization's past emphasis on professional development "to become a national voice on athletics issues."

In April, FARA's executive committee will consider reformatting the organization's annual forum to encourage discussion of and decisions about current issues.

"We have not had any kind of a parliamentary session at our FARA Fall Forum," Streb said. "We've not had any kind of an issue-oriented debate. We have not had anything that would lead to any sort of resolution coming forward. So one of the first things on the agenda for this April meeting is to talk about creating a structure at the fall meeting for doing that.

"What I'd like to do is come out of that April retreat with a resolution articulating FARA's position on academic reform. I'd like to take that to the fall meeting, have a discussion, have a debate if there's going to be one and actually bring it to a vote. And then take that resolution, which I assume would pass, and run with it."

Promoting student-athlete welfare

The recent major revisions of NCAA academic legislation understandably captured faculty representatives' attention -- not just because they will play a role on campuses in implementing the new standards, but also because few people credit faculty with a significant role in their adoption.

"The faculty reps' association, and faculty reps in general, should have been leading the academic reform movement," Streb said.

"We probably should have been getting some of the publicity that the Knight Commission got and the Drake Group got -- not that we would have said the same things that those groups said.... But we should have taken the same kind of visible leadership role in academic reform that those groups have tried to take. I believe you're going to see our organization take more of a role as we look at the whole academic reform package."

That shift in direction may represent FARA's best opportunity to address a major problem that has afflicted the organization since restructuring -- declining participation by Division I faculty athletics representatives.

"The numbers in Division I are down (at the FARA Fall Forum)," Goldfield said. "We used to devote the fall forum -- not exclusively, but in a primary way -- to discussing pending legislation coming up at the Convention. We don't do that any more in Division I. We hold important workshops and forums and so on, but as with the NCAA Convention, that's not a big draw for Division I people."

In response to the new Division I annual legislative cycle, FARA also plans to resurrect its Division I Legislative Review Committee. FARA has maintained similar committees in Divisions II and III since restructuring, but the Division I committee was disbanded with the switch to the NCAA cabinet/council structure.

"The role of this committee will be to monitor legislation and, before it gets to the Management Council, to inform faculty reps of this legislation and take a position, with pretty detailed reasons why," Goldfield said.

But FARA appears eager to do more than comment on pending legislation, and it is interested in addressing more than merely academic issues.

"The faculty athletics representative should first and foremost be representing the interests of the student-athlete -- whether this is about academic integrity and support for degree completion; protection from abuse by coaches or unsupportive faculty; ensuring that campus education programs exist for gambling, alcohol, performance-enhancing substances, et cetera." Husic said. "Given the different pressures and expectations of coaches, athletics administrators and presidents, it is difficult for them to always speak on behalf of the best interests of students."

In fact, it may be difficult to define where a particular issue affects student-athlete welfare -- a problem that also challenges faculty, according to Bates. He points to last season's 12-game football schedule in Division I and likely efforts to make that format permanent.

"To me, that's a student-athlete welfare issue, but some people would look at that as, if you've got to balance a budget, maybe you've got to have 12 games," he said. "Others would say, wait a minute -- football's a rough sport, these kids get banged up quite a bit over the course of a season, and September to January is a long haul....

"There's a need for money and there's a concern for the student-athlete, and those may collide at some point. Faculty need to figure out what our role is as it relates to balanced budgets versus being concerned about the academic welfare of student-athletes. If we don't pay attention, it'll become a budget issue rather than a student-athlete welfare issue."

"When we look at the kinds of issues that faculty reps take positions on, we certainly take very strong positions on initial-eligibility and continuing-eligibility issues," said Tony Capon of the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, who currently chairs the Division II Management Council. "We also take positions on demands on student-athlete time, and in that sense I think we're advocating for student-athletes -- not necessarily for their athletics experiences, but with a broader perspective of what it means to be the 'student' part of the student-athlete.

"I think we can be effective advocates. I think the faculty reps' association has done so, and faculty reps on individual campuses have that opportunity as well."

Connecting with presidents

Faculty leaders agree that in the restructured NCAA, it is crucial to forge connections with the presidents and chancellors who now govern the Association and increasingly make key decisions about athletics in conferences and on campuses.

"I always say that much of the real business for the faculty goes on in individual campuses," Bates said. "I think it starts at the campus level, where most faculty have direct access to presidents and need to make their views known."

But despite that opportunity, faculty leaders find that presidents often have only a sketchy understanding, at best, of faculty athletics representatives' work.

Goldfield tells the story of a faculty representative who attended a meeting of presidents in a Division I conference for the sole purpose of describing his job. "He did that, and he came back to report that many of them were surprised; they had no idea what we do. They all knew that the NCAA mandates a faculty rep, but they had no clue what we do.

"The first thing I would say to faculty reps is to sit down with your president, tell him or her what you do, and then meet frequently thereafter."

Such efforts may be harmed, however, by a trend that Capon has observed.

"There is a growing tendency with some of the presidents to want to make the faculty rep on their campus a rotating position," he said. "Some CEOs are saying the faculty rep ought to be a three-year or four-year position."

Capon said a new faculty athletics representative assumes the job without knowledge of NCAA rules and procedures and lacking understanding of compliance and initial- or continuing-eligibility issues. "If presidents are going to make this a rotating position, they're going to diminish the role of the faculty rep on their campus, because they're essentially going to be turning the position over just at the time the incumbent gets to the point where he or she is really comfortable with what they're doing," Capon said.

Faculty athletics representatives not only need time to establish a role, they also need to make themselves indispensable, suggests Bates, who has been faculty representative at Michigan since 1989.

"My real value on this campus is to know (proposed legislation) well, to be able to convey it to the president and say here are the pros and cons, and to say that while I understand that you will cast the final vote, it's my job to make sure you are well-briefed. If we do that a few times -- and we have to initiate it -- and it seems to have value, then the president's going to start calling us. But if we don't do it, then the president will assume either we don't know, or we don't have a role, or we don't have any value."