Former Indiana University, Bloomington, President Myles Brand began his term as the NCAA's fourth CEO January 1, and will be addressing NCAA Convention delegates January 12 in his first state of the Association speech. Brand, who has held significant positions in higher education for more than three decades and has been Indiana's CEO since 1994, is the first sitting president appointed to serve as NCAA president.

Brand participated in a question-and-answer session with The NCAA News recently, during which he spoke about the state of the NCAA, issues he expects to face early in his tenure, the NCAA president's role in leading the Association and the integration of intercollegiate athletics within higher education.

Q You made it clear when you were appointed to succeed Cedric Dempsey that the first thing you wanted to do was listen to the constituents within the NCAA. What have you heard so far?

A I am glad to hear people praise the NCAA and the search committee for appointing a sitting president. I am, however, aware that I need to do much more learning and listening. I will work hard at that this year. There's an accumulated wisdom within the NCAA and throughout its member conferences and schools, and I'll do everything I can to find out what has worked in the past, what has been productive and what offers the best promise for the future.

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Q Many have said that the hiring of a college president as NCAA CEO sends "a strong message." What do you interpret that message to be?

A You have to look at the first Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics report that was published in 1991. I would suggest that report really was the beginning of the reform movement. It had a number of very positive, strong recommendations -- primary among those was the fact that presidential control is essential to the success of intercollegiate athletics. Through the 1990s and into the present time, we've seen a growing understanding of that recommendation and the beginnings of the changes that it has generated. The NCAA appointing a sitting president as its CEO is in keeping with that emphasis. It sends the message that reform, in the sense of re-emphasizing academic accomplishments and the academic missions of universities and colleges, is critical.

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Q Ced Dempsey near the end of his term said that the NCAA doesn't always "function according to the greater good." In other words, NCAA legislation increasingly seems to fulfill the needs and desires of individual institutions and conferences rather than be in the best interests of the greater athletics/academic enterprise. Dempsey said that is due in large part to the "funding dilemma," where financial gain, and not what may be best for college sports, drives decisions. Do you agree, and if so, how can the NCAA reduce the funding dilemma in order to encourage institutions to return to the "greater good" attitude?

A It's human nature, and we should expect that in intercollegiate athletics or in any human endeavor, human beings will pay more careful attention to those things that directly affect them, their families, their colleagues, their enterprise. So this is not surprising.

The role of the NCAA is to recognize those natural human tendencies but also to be the voice of the greater good for all of intercollegiate athletics. Part of the answer is that everyone does better when the entire enterprise does better. Part of the answer is that there's a certain good will and ethical behavior that's necessary for all to succeed. So the NCAA has to balance the natural and legitimate desires for each individual group, conference and school to do well with the duty to ensure that intercollegiate athletics is healthy and prosperous. The Association also must keep its best values at the forefront and understand that intercollegiate athletics can succeed at the local level only if it succeeds at the national level.

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Q There's been some speculation about the NCAA needing to control football in order to achieve meaningful reform. That control sometimes is posed as a Division I-A playoff, or at least as more control over the postseason in some way. Can you comment about that?

A The football issues, most especially the postseason and preseason play, need careful study. Personally, I'm very worried about the expansion of the number of games from 11 to 12. That's a large number, and then when you add in a preseason game or more than one postseason game, you could see young men in college playing as many as 15 games. I believe that's excessive. So the issue has to be examined carefully. The questions in football need wide consideration by members, conferences and by the NCAA. There is work to be done here. It must be done in a collegial spirit for the good of the game, and most especially, it must be done in a way that respects the academic commitments of students. I would hope that in the next few years we will be able to settle on a better approach.

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Q The NCAA governance structure is designed to give CEOs more control, yet one of the concerns is that CEOs who aren't on the Division I Board of Directors or the Divisions II and III Presidents Councils are more disengaged from the process than they were before the Association restructured in 1997. Do you sense that the majority of college presidents want to be more involved than they are? If so, how does the NCAA make that happen?

A Divisions II and III seem basically satisfied with the new structure. There may be some minor changes necessary in Divisions II and III, but there are more serious problems in Division I. I certainly do not want to go back to the old grand Convention. I went to too many of them and always felt they were not sufficiently productive. But there are some things that can be done in Division I. First, we need to go back and re-examine the participation level of the faculty athletics representatives and the athletics directors. We need to have a mechanism by which they can have direct input into the decision-making even though the final decisions are to be made by the presidents and chancellors. It will take some hard thinking to arrive at the right approach, but the current approach is not working.

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A The NCAA, including the president, has to both serve and lead -- I do not see those as incompatible. The NCAA first and foremost is a membership organization, and the NCAA president and staff must be responsive to the members' needs. They also must be respectful of the very important fact that it is the presidents and chancellors who make the final decisions on their campuses about their athletics programs and that they work together to make decisions at the conference and national levels.

The NCAA president and staff can provide leadership in discussing directions and drawing out ideas that may be nascent, pointing mostly to the necessity to follow clear principles and adhere to the core values of the Association.

Our job is to draw out the best in intercollegiate athletics as envisioned by the members. That's my view, and it leaves a great deal of space for direct leadership from the president and staff.

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Q One byproduct of restructuring in Division I is that conferences have been given a more influential role. Are Division I conference commissioners and university presidents on the same page with regard to the NCAA mission?

A In my experience, conference commissioners are very sensitive and responsive to the presidents. The Big Ten is the conference I know best at this point, and it is clear that the Big Ten presidents are interested in academic reform, and the conference itself -- including its commissioner -- has worked to forward that agenda. Conferences play a critically important role -- they are partners in the process.

The goal, of course, in the NCAA is to understand the individual members and schools, but also to understand the cumulative view from conferences as that is communicated by the commissioners. We need to learn to work with those conferences and their leaders in order to find a mutual agenda that we can move forward. The NCAA and the members can be most productive if we are all on the same page. Whether the members' views are expressed individually or by conferences, the key is to make sure we're moving in the same direction.

So while everyone in the NCAA itself, at the conference level or at the individual school level, is concerned about the financial viability of athletics programs, the truth of the matter is that the major concern must be -- has to be -- academic success and the reform necessary to achieve it. To my knowledge, conference commissioners are a positive force moving us in that direction.

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Q An issue that figures to hit a boiling point early in your tenure is Title IX. How should the NCAA should position itself in such a matter, especially since its own membership may be divided on how the law should be interpreted?

A We have to see what the Paige commission says before we react, but Title IX is one of the most important pieces of legislation passed in the second half of the 20th century affecting higher education. I have two young granddaughters whom I would very much like to see have the full range of opportunities to participate in athletics competition both in high school and in college.

Title IX has changed the face of intercollegiate athletics by enabling women to participate at the highest levels. But the work is not done. I should not like to see Title IX weakened in any way that makes it more difficult for young women to participate fully, nor should I like to see Title IX weakened so that its effectiveness and timeliness is diminished. That may create some conflict, but I'm prepared to speak out strongly if Title IX is set back. It's an early test case, because I understand that not everyone agrees with that perspective, particularly from the administrative side. Presidents tend to agree, however.

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A It depends. It's been very strictly interpreted -- almost a plus-or-minus 1 percent -- and just because of the natural ebb and flow of things, that's almost impossible to keep. But if it's substantially weakened, the answer is yes, I'll speak out strongly against it. Not everyone's going to agree with me, but so be it.

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Q Where do Divisions II and III fit within the NCAA?

A Divisions II and III are very important. They're different from Division I, and especially from Division I-A. They each have their own integrity. Division III concerns a wide range of schools, some that focus on the accessibility of students, others that focus on high academic achievement. There are some questions in that regard about whether there's enough compatibility amongst all those schools, and whether to continue in the current configuration. That question deserves serious attention.

Division II is good for its own sake. I hope people are not in Division II feeling that they should be in some other division, particularly Division I. I have a great deal of respect for the schools and the accomplishments of student-athletes in Division II. They should take great pride in the quality of their programs and the type of athletic play involved.

I don't particularly like the titles Divisions I, II and III because they sound hierarchical. I've asked senior staff in Divisions II and III to think about other names that might be more descriptive and, frankly, that better reflect the missions and goals of those institutions. The three divisions are different. They participate in intercollegiate athletics in different ways. They have different goals. And intercollegiate athletics plays different roles within their universities. We should be respectful and, indeed, we should applaud what each division is doing.

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A When you think of balancing, you think of two different things on a scale of equal weight or importance. That's not what I have in mind. There's only one thing, and that is the university.

Intercollegiate athletics is part of the university, part in the sense that those who participate in intercollegiate athletics are students, and part in the sense that the operations and conduct of intercollegiate athletics should fit fully into the university itself. By integration I mean that full consideration should be given to student-athletes as members of the student body, ensuring that they have the full range of opportunities for a fine education. By integration I mean the athletics department should be under the control of the president and the normal operations of the athletics department should be integrated fully into the operations of the university. Integration means there is one and only one institution, and that's the university.

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Q What reaction have you had from your presidential peers since accepting the position?

A I'm getting two reactions -- one that is all positive from my presidential peers, but secondly, I occasionally am asked why would I want to do this. And I've got to say that it's a wonderful opportunity to not merely move forward the academic reform agenda, but also -- and I consider this to be at least equally important -- to be an advocate for the positive values of college athletics.

Over the last decade or more, mostly because of the problems that have arisen in individual cases, or systemic problems as well, there's been more attention paid to the difficulties faced in intercollegiate athletics and not to the real value of them. We need to bring back into sharp focus the positive value of intercollegiate athletics. The virtues that young men and women learn -- hard work, time management, respect for others, team play, the sense of community and the sense of knowing how to win and lose gracefully -- those virtues are going to be valuable throughout the lifetime of young men and women.

The games themselves also deserve praise. There's nothing like going to an college basketball game, football game, lacrosse game, swim meet -- the fact of the matter is they're exciting. I'm pleased that we're able to have great fan access on CBS and ESPN for our national tournaments, but also on local television and radio. That enables the general public, as well as the university communities, to identify with their teams, feel pride in their university's accomplishments and understand better the great striving young men and women do in their athletics endeavors.