Over time, enforcement has played a significant role in how people perceive the NCAA. Most people see the Association as providing two primary functions -- championships and a regulatory role. The NCAA's image tends to be more positive under the flag of the former rather than the latter. But recently, the needle has begun to move on the "reputation" of regulation. Research has shown, in fact, that when people link enforcement with the attribute of fair play -- something everyone wants and expects from intercollegiate athletics -- they are more likely to understand and accept the need for a regulatory arm. After all, that's what rules and their enforcement are meant to accomplish -- fair play.

Membership respect for the enforcement function gained momentum in the mid-1980s. At the 1985 NCAA Convention, sometimes referred to as the "integrity" Convention, delegates adopted the repeat-violator clause, which meant if a school was found twice for major violations, it would widen the period in which the program could be suspended.

The membership also enacted legislation so that if a staff member committed violations at one school and then went to another school before the infractions case at the first institution could be heard, the Committee on Infractions could take an action to affect that coach at the second institution. Two other significant changes -- the definition of secondary violations and a minimum penalty for major violations - also were adopted.

"It was a ground-breaking time in enforcement," said Mark Jones, who began working for the enforcement group in 1986. "Those proposals changed the scope of enforcement. What the definition of a secondary violation did was create a box of behaviors that were clearly secondary and anything that didn't fit in that box catapulted you to major infractions, which subjected you to some significant penalties. As a result, a higher level of respect for all rules evolved.

"We moved from a culture of 'if you're not buying players or paying them after they get there then you're not breaking the rules' to an era where all rules are important."

Perhaps the 1985 Convention signaled the membership's willingness to take enforcement seriously and give the staff the necessary tools to make a difference. Now, almost two decades later, almost half the major cases are self-reported. That may indicate how the membership is reacting to rules violations.

For those who aren't reacting correctly to rules violations, the words "tough as nails" have been used. It's a phrase NCAA President Myles Brand frequently offers when speaking about major infractions. Though the NCAA has embarked on a "student-athlete-first" culture where student-athletes are given the benefit of the doubt if they had no culpability in the violation, there should be no leniency for willful rules-breaking.

"The NCAA must be fair, but it also must be tough," Brand has said. "I am proud of our 'student-athlete-first' philosophy that gives student-athletes the benefit of the doubt in academic waivers, eligibility appeals and reinstatement cases in which precedent is unclear or in which the prescribed outcome would unfairly disadvantage the student-athlete. That epitomizes the NCAA's attention to fairness. But I also want the NCAA to protect the integrity of college sports by enforcing that fairness. When those principles are willfully breached by institutions or individuals, our response must be unmistakably tough."

NCAA Vice-President for Enforcement Services David Price agreed that egregious violations should be met with a hard-nosed response.

"But 'tough as nails' doesn't mean that we're going to eliminate trust or not be willing to work with an institution during the investigation," he said. "In the vast majority of cases, institutions want to find out what's going on, address the issues, be accountable for what happened and then move on.

"We're here to help them do that, and we want to do that in a cooperative way. If institutions choose not to be cooperative, or in cases where major violations are known but the institution attempts to cover them up, then there should be a stiff price to pay."

-- Gary T. Brown