ANAHEIM, California -- Division II devoted its principal discretionary time at the NCAA Convention to discussing sportsmanship issues and was rewarded January 12 with a fast-paced hour in which a panel of experts challenged athletics administrators to demand more of players, coaches and fans.

Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA); Tom Shirley, athletics director at the University of Philadelphia; and Sue Willey, senior woman administrator at the University of Indianapolis, agreed that sportsmanship and civility are taking a beating these days at all levels of athletics competition.

Teaff and Willey related tales from classrooms to illustrate the shaky ethical ground on which many contemporary students may be standing.

Teaff said that in the course of a lecture at Baylor University, he asked the students the meaning of the word "integrity." "You should have heard some of the answers," he said.

Willey said she was prompted to develop a sports ethics class after becoming convinced that many young people believe that ethics in sports are somehow different from ethics in life. "The first week of that course is always the worst week of the year for me," she said, noting the consistent lack of ethical awareness among her new students.

Willey said she shows the students a video of a last-minute play in a basketball game when a player from one team falls to the floor and begins to bark. While the other team is distracted by the barking, the team inbounds the ball and scores an easy goal to win the game. Willey said in the absence of instruction to the contrary, students almost invariably believe that such gamesmanship is inspired. "Is there any such thing anymore as cheapening a win?" she asked.

Shirley said the problem may relate to fear more than anything else. "Why do we have this erosion of sportsmanship?" he asked. "We have fear -- fear of confronting parents, fear of losing athletes, fear of lawsuits, fear from officials and fear from administrators. For all those reasons, the rules aren't enforced because people are asking, 'Is it really worth it?' "

Shirley said the pursuit of sportsmanship is worth it, along with a companion quest to develop civility. "One of my students came to school dressed poorly, and I asked him if that was how he was going to dress when he interviews with IBM. He said, 'Of course not.' He thinks you can just flip a switch by getting a haircut and dressing up, but it doesn't work that way."

Teaff, who chaired the AFCA Ethics Committee for 12 years while serving as head football coach at Baylor, lamented that his sport is slipping on the sportsmanship front after five years of progress. In particular, he said players in 2002 tested the bounds of college football's showboating rule, which (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not) coincided with several highly publicized fights, the first time in more that five years that college football has been plagued with widespread fighting.

Meanwhile, Teaff said that crowd control has become ever more difficult as poor social norms mix with excessive enthusiasm and alcohol to fuel celebrations that approach or exceed riot status. The ritual tearing down of the goalpost is so far out of control that Teaff said, "Somebody's going to get killed one of these days."

Willey said that the Great Lakes Valley Conference has taken a number of steps designed to enhance sportsmanship. However, problems remain because she said coaches and administrators are reluctant to confront issues when they arise.

But coaches should not feel powerless to help the situation, Teaff said.

"We have the ultimate tool," he said, "and that is the bench. Players who play do not like the bench."

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The new format for the Convention time previously occupied by the Division II issues forum appeared to succeed. A series of educational workshops preceded the sportsmanship session. Most of them were utilitarian, providing instruction for processes or explanations for policies. However, a session hosted by the Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee was somewhat more free-form and generated productive give-and-take after an unpromising beginning.

The SAAC session, along with two others, began at noon, which had a strong adverse effect on attendance (at the beginning, seven SAAC panelists, 11 delegates and three staff members). However, SAAC Chair Brianna Williams, representing Mt. Olive College, kept the session alive by asking questions of the audience. Eventually, more delegates arrived after completing lunch, and what followed was a constructive discussion on how to develop more effective student-athlete committees and student-athlete activities at the local and conference levels.

Administrators seemed especially interested in a Bentley College arrangement in which teams are rewarded for attending other team's events, especially those of "brother and sister" teams that have been assigned to them.

One administrator also suggested that the national SAAC take advantage of the approaching regional student-athlete conferences to provide information and training on developing conference-level SAACs.

Other educational sessions focused on an alternate graduation-rate study, the conference grant application and annual report process, academic enhancement and health and safety grants, enhancing the role of faculty athletics administrators, an update on issues pertaining to legislative deregulation, championships issues and the diversity-grant program.

On January 10, Division II delegates also were presented with a report from the Division II Football Issues Project Team. The overall reception for the project team's work was positive, although delegates did have questions.

Elements of the plan generating reaction included the three-hour recovery period for multiple practice days, whether preseason practice for other sports might be unduly extended to accommodate football and keep start dates constant (see related story, page 1), whether the benefits of moving the football championship date back might outweigh the liabilities, and the effect of strength-of-schedule requirements on independent institutions that could experience difficulties filling out a schedule.