For the third time in 15 years, the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics has convened to discuss intercollegiate athletics issues. The group met November 24 in Washington, D.C., to address financial concerns in college sports, including commercialization, operating budgets and capital expenses, as well as the impact of television contracts on college sports and the status of the Bowl Championship Series.

The Commission reconvened to build on the foundation built by the two previous iterations of the group. The Knight Foundation was established in 1989 in response to a number of high-profile scandals in college sports and produced a 1991 report known primarily for its emphasis on presidential control of intercollegiate athletics. The Commission issued a second report in 2001 that called attention to academic and fiscal integrity, among other concerns.

Though this version of the Commission will issue its own report sometime next spring, it isn't expected to be as ground-breaking as the two that preceded it. Commission Chair William Friday, who co-chaired the last group in 2001, called this edition an extension of the previous groups that will "work closely with the NCAA and other parties interested in the reform movement as we have come to identify it."

Knight Foundation President and CEO Hodding Carter shared Friday's view that this Commission is more of a monitoring body.

"This group is clearly not a break from the past but it represents a continuum and its role is going to be much less epic," Carter said. "We're not biting off whole swatches of new territory. Many of the road maps already are in hand, but we do intend to monitor and comment and see what other things may be useful for us to address."

The November 24 meeting featured presentations from Farris Womack, former chief financial officer at the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Dan Fulks, accounting professor at Transylvania University and author of several NCAA revenue and expense studies.

The Commission also heard from Tulane University President Scott Cowen and University of Mississippi President Robert Khayat about ongoing negotiations among Division I-A conferences concerning postseason football access. Khayat represented conferences with ties to the Bowl Championship Series, while Cowen spoke for a coalition of leagues that has expressed concerns about access to the BCS. Both presidents indicated the discussions have been positive so far.

Friday said the Commission has not determined whether to make specific proposals regarding the BCS or postseason football. Carter called the conference realignment and postseason football issues "primarily organizational concerns" and "outside the Commission's primary focus."

"To the degree that aspects of postseason play carry a threat to the already overextended non-academic life of the college athlete, though (additional games, for example), that would be of interest to this group," Carter said.

Pleased with NCAA

Commission members also discussed current academic-reform initiatives under way within the NCAA governance structure. The group applauded the efforts of a committee chaired by former Vanderbilt University Athletics Director Todd Turner, which has been influential in developing an incentives/disincentives structure designed to hold institutions accountable for improving student-athletes' academic performance.

Both Friday and Carter said Commission members are pleased with the NCAA's progress on reform.

"The group is happy with many of the directions under way at the NCAA and members want to continue to be of some assistance in those efforts," Carter said. "They also feel, though, that there are areas yet to be explored, including what is happening below the intercollegiate level."

Friday said the Commission will continue to explore financial concerns in college sports. That review coincides with work the NCAA is undertaking to determine the impact of spending on college sports. A preliminary study released in August refutes several myths about the effects of spending on athletics success, increased admissions and growing endowments, but the study did not adequately address institutions' capital expenditures in its findings. The NCAA currently is working with the Mellon Foundation and the National Association of College and University Business Officers to gather more comprehensive data.

Friday said the financial "excesses" are what bother the Commission.

"The excesses we've seen cause those who are involved in athletics real concern," he said. "We need to take hold and do what is rational and reasonable to get back on track again. We've lost public confidence and we need to do something about it."

Carter pointed to those excesses as contributing factors to other concerns in college sports, such as academic fraud. He said those are the "newer expressions of unease about intercollegiate athletics" that go beyond the previous Commission agendas and will shape the group's future deliberations.

"The searing set of events and incidents and tragedies over the past year involving college leaders, coaches and players may be signs that if money is not the root of all evil, it is a contributing factor with which we have not yet successfully grappled," he said.

Knight Commission members

Members of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics:

Michael F. Adams, president, University of Georgia

Carol Cartwright, president, Kent State University

Mary Sue Coleman, president, University of Michigan

Len Elmore, ESPN analyst and president of Pivot Productions

Elson Floyd, president, University of Missouri, Columbia

William Friday, president emeritus, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, chair

Thomas K. Hearn Jr., president, Wake Forest University

Adam Herbert, president, Indiana University, Bloomington

Steve Sample, prsident, University of Southern California

Harold Shapiro, president emeritus, Princeton University

R. Gerald Turner, president, Southern Methodist University

Charles E. Young, president, University of Florida