The NCAA Executive Committee did not take long at its April 29 meeting in Indianapolis to approve the Association's most comprehensive strategic plan in its near-100-year history, which means the exhaustive and inclusive sweep of constituency input to construct the plan over the last 18 months was time well spent.

Indeed, Executive Committee members took only a few minutes to bless the final draft of the plan and charge the national office staff with implementing initiatives that support the plan's goals and objectives. But the smooth-sailing approval came only after 15 data-collection sessions over the past year that touched virtually every sect of the Association -- from presidents, administrators and coaches to commissioners, faculty and student-athletes -- and a Web survey of more than 5,000 intercollegiate athletics stakeholders who further helped shape the plan. In addition, six "validation sessions" were conducted once the initial draft of the plan was developed. Those sessions included heavy input from CEOs.

The result is a succinct and powerful document that lays out a core ideology for the NCAA, an envisioned future, and measurable short- and long-term goals. The immediate goals are to ensure that intercollegiate athletics is integral to higher education, to enrich the student-athlete experience, to base future governance decisions on the best research available, to improve the national office administrative efforts, and to fortify the perception of the NCAA and college sports.

The plan culminates a directive from NCAA President Myles Brand, who said in his inaugural State of the Association address at the 2003 NCAA Convention that the Association needed a plan developed through a timely, value-driven process that would be shaped by the fundamental principles of advocacy and reform.

Now that the plan has been adopted, Brand believes it will have a significant impact. "It is not a consensus document but it does reflect the directions the membership wants to pursue," he said. "The NCAA has embarked on many strategic-planning exercises in the past, but this one is different because we're actually going to implement it. This plan will put the Association in a better position than it has been in before."

Brand already has assigned staff to develop strategies and measurable outcomes for each of the objectives identified under the plan's five goals. As part of that process, the staff will examine if some functions currently administered by the national office staff should be continued or if those functions could be performed on an outsourced basis. The national office announced on April 29 in fact that duties performed by seven employees in the building operations and warehouse areas have been outsourced to another firm. Other areas remain under review.

Presidential involvement, authority

In addition to approving the strategic plan, the Executive Committee also took steps to afford more authority to the NCAA president. Its subcommittee on the role of the president, chaired by University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, recommended that the NCAA president be provided the authority to recommend legislative changes. The group reasoned that the NCAA Constitution charges the Executive Committee with identifying core issues that affect the Association as a whole, and giving the NCAA president the authority to routinely suggest legislative changes will help the Executive Committee be more responsive to that charge.

If the Executive Committee supports a legislative change recommended by the NCAA president, the presidential bodies of the appropriate division(s) would be asked to adopt or seek adoption through their normal legislative process. If the change cannot occur in a timely manner to provide appropriate relief, the division presidential bodies would be asked to allow relief through the normal waiver process until the change can be implemented.

For example, NCAA President Brand will charge national office staff to review and recommend revisions to rules and regulations that do not support the "student-athlete-first" philosophy. Suggestions for change in those areas would routinely be forwarded to Brand, who then would seek Executive Committee support for legislative change.

The Executive Committee also reviewed and supported a directive related to the "student-athlete-first" philosophy that gives national office staff more authority to make initial decisions in academic-waiver and student-athlete reinstatement cases and then forwarding those decisions to the committees charged with ruling on such matters. The initiative reduces the decision-making bureaucracy while retaining the committees' ultimate authority. In essence, the committees' function would shift from being a "hearing" entity toward being an appellate body.

Quasi-endowment proposal

The Executive Committee also continued discussing an idea it broached in January about the possibility of creating a quasi-endowment to protect the long-term financial viability of the organization. The endowment concept, similar to what typically is in place at most colleges and universities, would provide resources to support ongoing initiatives for the national office or student-athlete programming.

While the Association has a long-term media contract, Executive Committee members realize a fiscal responsibility for future program support, especially since more than 90 percent of Association resources are contingent on the Division I Men's Basketball Championship.

Committee members agreed that an endowment of $500 million would be necessary to ensure that the current infrastructure, and membership and student-athlete programming, could be supported indefinitely. The endowment could initially be funded from the former NCAA Foundation unrestricted net assets and the NCAA working capital reserve. Annual contributions would be from unbudgeted revenues and expenditure savings, in addition to an amount equal to 10 percent of the total operating budget, in accordance with the current practice for the working capital reserve. Fifty percent of those amounts would be deposited in the quasi-endowment with the remaining 50 percent available for other allocations, including Division I supplemental distributions. No Division II or III allocations would be used.

Executive Committee members believe the quasi-endowment would give the Association much-needed financial independence and additional flexibility in future contract negotiations. NCAA President Brand called the quasi-endowment "prudent management more than anything else."

"Every nonprofit organization should be planning in this way," he said. "Our job is to be stewards for the future economic viability of the organization."

The Executive Committee agreed to support the idea and deliver the proposal to its budget committee to further define allocations to the fund and the impact on Association members. The budget committee will bring final recommendations back to the Executive Committee for approval.

In other action, the Executive Committee supported recommendations from its subcommittee on gender and diversity regarding future events in South Carolina and Mississippi, states in which an NCAA moratorium exists because of the Confederate battle flag matter. Committee members agreed to require the Division I Championships/ Competition Cabinet's event certification subcommittees to deny requests for certification of bowl games or exempted contests in those states.

The Executive Committee also reviewed the subcommittee's request for the NCAA to reconsider its previous decision to eliminate $1.2 million in NCAA funding toward the National Youth Sports Program (NYSP) beginning in 2005. The subcommittee believes it is important for the NCAA to maintain a financial relationship with the NYSP to encourage minority participation in higher education pursuits. The Executive Committee referred the issue to its budget committee for review. The Executive Committee will not take final action on budget issues until August.

Other highlights

Executive Committee
April 29/Indianapolis

Authorized a review of the NCAA committee structure in an effort to lessen bureaucracy, improve efficiency and reduce expenses. The review, to be conducted by the NCAA president through the senior vice-presidents, will include consideration of (1) eliminating committee functions that can be handled elsewhere and (2) consolidating committees where responsibilities may be redundant or duplicative.

Directed the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet and the Divisions II and III Championships Committees to conduct a joint review of issues pertaining to playing-rules administration.

Agreed to establish an Executive Committee Administrative Subcommittee, which will address critical issues in the interim between meetings with the understanding that all actions by the subcommittee would be ratified at the next Executive Committee meeting. The subcommittee would be composed of the Executive Committee chair, the chairs of the three division presidential bodies and one Division I-AA or I-AAA member of the Executive Committee.

Noted the importance for the Executive Committee to monitor legislative proposals that affect multiple divisions, specifically those that address membership criteria for one division that may have an unintended consequence for another division. The Executive Committee charged the staff with reviewing pending proposals and bringing any concerns to the committee.