Gary Roberts, faculty athletics representative
Tulane University
New Orleans Times-Picayune

"In my mind it is absolutely certain that you are going to continue to see a distancing between the commercially powerful schools that are in the Bowl Championship Series and the less-economically powerful schools that are not in the BCS. Other schools may not wind up facing this kind of drastic action (a decision about remaining in Division I-A), but they are going to have to make some changes. ...

"Schools are going to have bite the bullet and admit although they are in I-A, they've found they can no longer spend and spend and spend. They'll nominally be in I-A, but not really competing at the I-A level."

Bobby May, director of athletics
Rice University
New Orleans Times-Picayune

"You've always got to be concerned in a situation like ours that you're minimizing costs. I think the time is long past for us to believe that intercollegiate athletes can pay for itself. But when you come assessing the value of your program against its costs, the intangibles justify (remaining in Division I-A)."

Academic reform

Kevin Hatcher, associate athletics director
University of Texas at El Paso
El Paso Times

Discussing the impact of increased eligibility standards that become effective with the entering class of 2003:

"Our compliance department is going to have to get more active with (the school's academic support structure). We're getting the plan in place right now. What we'll have to do is put a junior college recruit in a degree program before we even consider admission. Based on that evaluation, we'll be able to tell them during their last semester of junior college that they're going to have to take 18 units, or whatever, to get to that 40 percent. Gone are the days when kids could take 12 units a semester and be eligible. ...

"(Student-athletes will) have to stick with their majors, whether they want to or not. And those kids that need a little time to get started, they're going to be gone. Personally, as a minority, I don't agree with that because a lot of kids who are minorities are slower starters. The problem is the NCAA wants student-athletes to be integrated into the normal student population. But by doing this, they're not doing that at all. Normal students can change their degree plan whenever they want. ...

"(The new rules) are going to force all schools to recruit better students. There will be a huge advantage in recruiting kids who can be here four years."

Sports sponsorship

R. Michael Parsons, deputy athletics director
West Virginia University
Chronicle of Higher Education

"We need to have a successful football team because football generates significant revenue. If (the athletics department) is going to be self-sufficient, we need a winning team because that means more television appearances, bowl games, better season-ticket sales the next year. We want to compete in a lot of different sports. But in this day and age, that takes an increasing amount of resources."