The NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee (MOIC) used its June 8-12 meeting in San Francisco to continue its evaluation of the 16 NCAA programs that promote diversity within intercollegiate athletics.

The evaluation emanated from an Executive Committee Subcommittee on Gender and Diversity charge to ensure that current NCAA programs are the best ways to enhance diversity within the Association. The NCAA has allocated more than $4.5 million over the last two years to such programs.

The latest initiative is the NCAA Coaches Academy, which is set to begin in conjunction with the American Football Coaches Association convention in January and is aimed at advancing minority coaches to leadership positions in Division I-A football.

Not surprisingly, the committee voiced its continued support for almost all of the programs, pausing only on an effort called the Boys' and Girls' Sports Initiatives, which are programs administered by the National Youth Sports Corporation that targets minority boys and girls in nontraditional sports. The MOIC has asked for a more focused review of the program to see whether it is having the desired impact of increasing minority participation in nontraditional sports.

The committee also noted that the NCAA Summit on Athletics Opportunities for Minority Women, which had been an annual program, will not be conducted again until 2005 and that the funds that would have been used for the 2003 and 2004 events have been reallocated to other programs.

Otherwise, MOIC members were pleased with the current level of programming.

"All in all, the programs are going well," said MOIC Chair Eugene Marshall, the director of athletics at Ramapo College. "Our programs address a need that's part of the current culture. They focus on diversity development and preparing minorities for coaching and administrative positions."

Marshall noted, however, that though committee members were pleased with the programs in place, there still are too many situations, particularly in the hiring process, in which institutions ignore the intent of the programming. Marshall said the committee was especially disappointed with recent athletics director searches at high-profile Division I schools that were conducted in a short period of time.

"The NCAA has done a lot of work to put these diversity programs in place, and presidents who sit on the Board of Directors and Presidents Councils have pushed for their success," Marshall said, "but if CEOs at institutions don't follow the right hiring procedures, or if they don't step up and make that diversity hire, then all the programming is for naught. In some cases, we didn't even get the chance to send letters identifying minority candidates to the institutions before the new hire was announced."

Marshall said the committee's evaluation process would be able to withstand those who might accuse the group of merely rubber stamping programs that were the result of its own recommendations over the years.

"We're not just going through the motions," he said. "We're streamlining some of the programs, such as the summit, and we're taking a hard look at the effectiveness of all of the initiatives. If the programs aren't functioning the way they should be, then we need to reallocate those funds to programs that are."

The programming evaluations dovetailed with the committee's work on long-range planning. Committee members agreed that the emphasis in the next few years should continue to be on preparing minority male and female coaches -- in all sports, not just football -- for advancement. In that regard, the committee will work with the Committee on Women's Athletics to strategize budget requests for the next five years. Those two committees conduct a joint meeting in September.