Chris Kennedy, senior associate athletics director
Duke University
Durham (North Carolina) Herald-Sun

Discussing a new Annual Academic Progress Rate upon which incentives and disincentives would be based in Division I:

"We've got a 490-page rule book and that hasn't stopped people from doing what they want to do. The only violation you always get caught and punished for is losing. You always get caught for that. Is someone going to find out you've hired some senior English major to do some papers for some guy? Probably not. Are they going to find out if you go 2-23? Yeah.

"We can create this rule ... we can create all these academic regulations, but it's not going to solve the problem. That stream's just going to find another bed to run through."

Anne Mayhew, faculty athletics representative
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times-Free Press

Discussing a concern that the increased standards will encourage coaches to find less rigorous majors for student-athletes to keep them eligible:

"It is very important that all of our universities maintain institutional control of academic programs and ensure that any major they offer is of high academic quality. If universities don't offer excessively easy majors, then student-athletes can't choose them."

Virginia Shepherd, faculty senate president
Vanderbilt University
Atlanta Journal and Constitution

Discussing the faculty role in academic reform:

"When student-athletes come to our campus, we as faculty members are responsible for their educational experience. If we don't think they are getting the education they deserve, then we have to make a stand. ...

"I don't like words like 'watchdog,' and we certainly do not want an adversarial relationship with the athletics department. I would love to see the faculty working alongside athletics department personnel. We are all there to do the same job, and that's to help the student."

Title IX

Chris Plonsky, interim women's athletics director
University of Texas at Austin
Daily Texan (University of Texas at Austin)

"With football, there's no single women's sport that has that number of scholarship numbers, and even 85 has been greatly reduced. But at Texas, football has had an opposite effect, because football and its success drives about 85 percent of our revenue. If anything, it has allowed us to improve our facilities and what we offer, and has raised the bar for our other sports as well. Football has been the great unifier in terms of our athletics program.

"Title IX is a nondiscriminatory law, it is right, and it is fair. How institutions cope with the law is up to them. The law was passed in 1972, and any entity that was affected by that law that just ignored it had time to react. You can just hold Texas up as a shining example. If we can do it, other people can."

Jeff Moore, head women's tennis coach
University of Texas at Austin
Daily Texan (University of Texas at Austin)

"We wouldn't have college tennis on the women's side without Title IX, and certainly not at the level that it is now. There has not been a dark side to Title IX; it is unfortunate that certain men's sports have been cut, and when a sport is cut, it's definitely not the fault of Title IX, it depends on each individual case."

Sports sponsorship

Robert E. Fraley, head track and field coach
California State University, Fresno
Chronicle of Higher Education

"Right now, in the sports culture we live in, people favor the entertainment sports over the participation sports. (In the latter), there are huge returns when it comes to fitness and serving the educational needs of your community. Right now, those things are not highly valued (at colleges)."