Karl Benson, commissioner
Western Athletic Conference
Raleigh News Observer

"The financial disparity has gotten larger and larger; however, the competitive gap hasn't increased. We think ... we can compete. But the question is whether we can compete in the economic challenge. ...

"In the past 15 years or less, conferences started to become properties, and their primary purposes came to be being revenue generators."

Ian O'Connor, columnist
USA Today

"The university presidents, athletics directors and conference officials involved in this epic struggle are plowing low moral ground while the impressionable young people under their watch look on, confused over the Machiavellian messages being sent from educators who pledge their allegiance to academic reform in one breath, then abandon their ABCs for their BCS in the next. ...

"The NCAA betrays its own student-first dogma, encouraging conferences to grow and grow so they can score the TV revenue pouring into the intramural football title games awarded the dirty dozen crowd. Memo to university presidents: your timing stinks. You say you want control of run-amok programs, you reaffirm this position after the recent tidal wave of scandals, and then your ACC brothers and sisters -- with an assist from three Big East partners -- set off what's sure to be a coast-to-coast food fight."

Jeremy Foley, athletics director
University of Florida
Atlanta Journal

"Even if the ACC does its thing, we have to look at our conference and ask if there is anybody out there who can give us substantially more value than we have right now. We just don't see it. Right now we're splitting the (financial) pie 12 ways. For many of us, that's enough."

Lou Holtz, head football coach
University of South Carolina, Columbia
Gainesville (Florida) Sun

"You definitely have to be looking to the future because the landscape of college football is always going to be changing. That's one thing you can count on. Change is going to happen. Television certainly dominates a lot of the things you do."

Institutional control

Mark Bradley, columnist
Atlanta Journal and Constitution

"A coach cannot monitor 100 players 24 hours a day. Even if he could, that wouldn't be a display of discipline. Discipline, as the handy definition has it, is what you do when nobody's looking. A coach can only try his hardest and say his prayers. Players aren't software. Players are real people. ...

"A college president can seek to exert that precious Institutional Control, but humans aren't run by institutions. They do as they please.

"If nothing else, the symmetrical outbreak of sleaze spares us the customary gloating over a rival's misfortune. Such glee is always misplaced, always disingenuous. If something untoward can happen to them, it can happen just as easily to you. There are no perfect programs. All a school can do is hire an upstanding coach and trust his judgment. All a coach can do is recruit reputable people and hope against hope."

Future of Division III

Thomas Tritton, president
Haverford College
New York Times

Discussing a possible alliance among select Division III conferences:

"We can create a way station for 60 or 80 schools that share a sense that athletics is meant to be an extracurricular activity. It's not anti-athletics, but the Division III philosophy was to value participation in sports. Now the value is placed on winning a national championship. I feel the pressure on our athletes and coaches to move with that crowd. I want changes before that becomes irresistible."

Dennis Collins, commissioner
North Coast Athletic Conference
New York Times

"There has never been a competitive sports group like Division III -- even the Olympics has only 192 countries. How can anybody expect 425 schools -- and soon it will be 450 schools -- to each approach things the same way?"