Fifteen years ago, University of Tulsa President Bob Lawless' future was in the air. After all, he was executive vice-president and chief operations officer for Southwest Airlines, making a lofty salary with stock options and high-flying benefits. But there was one thing Lawless felt he wasn't making -- a difference.

He had been grounded in higher education before taking off for the airline industry, having logged 17 years in various academic capacities at the University of Houston and Texas A&M University, College Station. Frequently during his seven-year corporate tenure he was approached about a return to academia. Lawless would quip that such inquiries from former peers were made "not because I was any good, but because my former colleagues were so jealous that I had escaped to the real world and earning significant money that they wanted to reel me back in."

One offer in particular -- the presidency at Texas Tech University combined with the presidency of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center -- caught the native Texan's attention. "I didn't have any intention of going back to higher education," Lawless said, "but my wife Marcy and I looked at it from the standpoint of making a difference.

"We decided it would be more fulfilling to help people develop their minds than to fill airline seats."

So the man who had earned his wings in corporate America landed back in higher education as a college president, first at Texas Tech, then at Tulsa.

And now he is retiring after 15 years of making a difference both in higher education and in particular the NCAA.

Not many university CEOs have the time, energy and devotion not only to run the campus but to make a difference in one of the most complex enterprises in higher education -- intercollegiate athletics. His peers describe him as a principled man, a man with strong opinions but with enough caring and compassion to listen to others and reach the best decision.

NCAA President Myles Brand, whom Lawless had a hand in hiring, calls the distinguished leader a "superb president" and "a good thinker about academic and athletics policy."

"He also has the ability to implement principles and be supportive, and tough when necessary," Brand said. "He has proved himself both to be a wise and practical man."

"Bob Lawless has provided stellar leadership through an important time of transition for the NCAA," said Kent State University President Carol Cartwright, who succeeded Lawless last year as chair of the NCAA Executive Committee. "His quiet, unassuming style and thoughtful questions create an environment where everyone feels included and engaged in accomplishing our goals."

Time of sweeping change

Lawless' NCAA involvement came at an important time in Association history. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, control of intercollegiate athletics was shifting back toward CEOs after an era during which many people felt college sports was too focused on competition and revenue gain. At that time, the NCAA had established its Presidents Commission, which positioned CEOs in decision-making roles, and the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics was preparing to issue its ground-breaking report that called for increased CEO authority.

From 1994 through 2003, Lawless was heavily involved in that authority. He served on the Presidents Commission, including a stint as chair of Division I, and he was an original member of the Division I Board of Directors, the primary policy group implemented after the NCAA restructured its governance in 1997. He spent four years as a Board and Executive Committee member.

Lawless helped oversee sweeping changes in academic standards, tremendous growth in opportunities for women student-athletes, and television-rights negotiations that resulted in unprecedented contracts. All that time, though, Lawless said the biggest change was a collective shift toward educational values -- something he said the NCAA perhaps had drifted from during the affluent '80s.

"The NCAA back in the 1980s was principally an organization that was attended to most diligently by individuals who were athletics directors or representatives of athletics interests," Lawless said. "While they were interested in the educational component, they were more competition-based and championships-oriented. The NCAA has become more educationally oriented in the last 15 years."

Driving that change, Lawless said, was presidential control. He cited the Presidents Commission as a signal body, a group that could influence legislation and steer the NCAA back toward its educational mission. The Commission also increased CEO interest in athletics. Not only did the group develop and support legislation, it also played an active role in developing a Presidential Agenda Day at each NCAA Convention. That gave CEOs who attended the Convention an opportunity to focus on issues that most affected them.

When restructuring was approved, Lawless was at the forefront again. He served on a task force to review the membership structure during the transition period and emphasized the need for CEOs to be decision-makers. That was ensured with the creation of the Board and the Divisions II and III Presidents Councils.

"In terms of structure, the NCAA has clearly moved to set the role for CEOs to take control," Lawless said. He noted, though, that not all CEOs have taken that opportunity. "It's like any other evolving process," he said. "Some CEOs have incorporated this control and responsibility into their set of activities more than others."

NCAA transitions

Lawless may be the epitome of a CEO who puts intercollegiate athletics at the forefront. In addition to his Board and Executive Committee duties, he also became involved in other important NCAA groups. He chaired the Special Committee to Study NCAA Marketing, Licensing and Promotional Activities, and he also served on the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues, a group best known for shepherding reforms in the sport's recruiting culture.

If that's not enough, Lawless took on two other projects that would prove to be perhaps two of the most significant challenges in the Association's nearly 100-year history. One moved the NCAA national office across state lines and the other moved the Association across the reform threshold.

Lawless chaired "NCAA 2000," a group charged with finding a dynamic and fiscally sound location for the NCAA headquarters. Leasing arrangements on the Association's Kansas City-area office made it prudent to investigate other options, and Lawless' group scanned the continent for would-be locations. A short list of 10 cities, then a final list of four led to the decision to head to Indianapolis after a 47-year run in Kansas City.

It was a cold January day when Lawless and his committee toured the Indianapolis site, and it amuses him when he recalls that the site his group approved actually was across the street from the one upon which the office eventually was built.

"We spent a long time looking at the wrong site," Lawless chuckled.

But it turned out to be the right move.

Another right move was making the right hire. In 2002, then-NCAA President Cedric W. Dempsey announced he would retire when his contact expired at the end of the year. Dempsey had been an integral part of ground-breaking reforms in Division I, and it was important that his successor be able to close the deal and move the Association ahead. Lawless chaired the search committee that recommended Brand -- then president at Indiana University, Bloomington -- as Dempsey's successor.

The choice was significant on many counts. Brand represented the first sitting president to serve as the NCAA's chief executive, which signaled the Executive Committee's desire to fortify presidential authority. The way the search was conducted also was significant. Despite high national interest, the short list of finalists flew under the media radar, and the announcement of Brand came as a genuine surprise.

"We conducted a search that was being talked about on the front pages of newspapers and sports sections for a three-month period, and there weren't any leaks," said University of Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway, who served with Lawless on the search group. "Bob is the one who led that."

Hemenway said Lawless was at his best in a role that demanded perfection. "He did something that is essential to any high-profile search like that," Hemenway said. "He created a sense of community among those of us on the committee. We realized we had a shared responsibility and needed to help each other to accomplish that responsibility, and the degree of cooperation, thoughtfulness and insight that characterized the search committee's deliberations can be attributed directly to Bob's leadership. He did a masterful job."

Now Lawless is in the position of being succeeded himself. He has agreed to stay at Tulsa until his replacement is identified. That search continues, and Lawless, who originally had said he would retire in June, suspects it might be another month or two before he closes the door behind him.

That door is one NCAA members are glad he opened 15 years ago.

"I felt I could make a bigger difference in higher education than I could in the airline industry," Lawless said. "But that thinking is probably true of everyone in higher education. Most people are in education because of a commitment or a mission they're on to make a difference in people's lives as opposed to just making money."

Lawless' NCAA service is a testament to his word.

"He's a consummate professional," Hemenway said. "Bob knows how to conduct a meeting and he's a very fair person, so everyone feels they've had a chance to make their points. He's not afraid to make his views known, but they're always made in the context of a mutual search for truth and effective policy.

"He's been a very good university president and he's been very good in his leadership positions with the NCAA."

Lawless speaks on intercollegiate athletics issues

On the relationship between college sports and corporate America:

"The NCAA's relationship with corporate America is a strong, positive relationship and one that is mutually fulfilling. Corporate America wants to be identified with positive things that happen in intercollegiate athletics. It goes beyond just the financial side of the sponsorship."

* * *

On college sports as a business:

"Nobody is saying that swimming and diving is a business, or soccer or rowing, but when you look at the money associated with college football -- the ticket sales and the expansion of stadiums and the additional home games -- it's hard to argue the point. Some of our practices in football and basketball have made those portions of intercollegiate athletics look like the entertainment business as opposed to the other sports. So if you say college sports is a business, you have to break it down into the high-profile sports that drive the kind of audience viewership that result in the high-dollar rights fees. Other sports are not a business, but part of the educational enterprise."

* * *

On future concerns:

"The NCAA's most pressing issues are to continue to move toward differentiating the college experience from the professional experience or the purely business side, and to be able to financially afford the enormous expense of intercollegiate athletics -- particularly at the Division I-A level -- and at the same time move more away from the professional model."

* * *

On the NCAA's leadership role:

"The NCAA can represent an enormous positive educational force -- it can be one of the leading educational associations in this country by providing means for education through athletics participation. If we can stay away from slipping into the business side -- if we can not make decisions just based on the economic desires but make them based on educational principles, then we'll be in good shape. But the pressure will be enormous to do something about the revenue side."

* * *

On NCAA strengths:

"The NCAA does best in terms of creating rules for competition that create a level playing field, and the NCAA does a superb job of conducting championships."

* * *

On NCAA weaknesses:

"The NCAA, being made up of members looking out for their own interests, has not yet figured out a way to more equitably distribute resources to its membership. The structure we have now really follows the tongue-in-cheek 'golden rule' principle -- those who have the gold are the ones making the rules. If the NCAA can really embrace wanting to be the nation's leading educational association instead of paying lip service to the notion, then the right things will happen."

* * *

On adding games in football:

"That's not consistent with what we should be doing about college sports. In my opinion, the only reason you add a game is for financial reasons. You don't make that decision because you think the young men need to play one more game to develop their skills. The overriding motivation is to bring in additional revenue. Any time we make a decision based principally on revenue, then we've got the wrong factors driving us."

* * *

On basketball revenue distribution:

"If we moved away from basing the distribution on your success in the tournament, we could eliminate a lot of the criticism of college sports being construed as a business. There should be the thinking of 'how can we most benefit student-athletes' that takes the on-court success part out of consideration. Distribution should not be predicated upon whether you win or lose."

* * *

On issues created by the Bowl Championship Series:

"The TV people who pay rights fees pay them because they believe there is a significant audience that will tune in to see certain teams play. The BCS conferences are the result of market pressure and market ability, which is all the business side of college sports. It would be hard to argue in any coherent way that the development of the BCS is not a business side of athletics."

* * *

On talks that have improved the relationship between BCS and non-BCS leagues:

"It's a positive move, but you'll never get to the point where the market is going to pay equal TV rights for Tulsa-SMU as opposed to Miami-Florida State. If you find anyone who is willing to do that, let me know."

The Lawless file

Employment

President, University of Tulsa, 1996-present

President and CEO, Texas Tech University/Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, 1989-96

Executive vice-president/
chief operations officer, Southwest Airlines, 1985-89

Vice-president finance and chief financial officer, Southwest Airlines, 1982-85

Numerous academic and administrative positions (including senior vice-chancellor, associate chancellor, associate dean of faculties, acting dean of business, associate dean of business, chair of the management science department, and director of doctoral programs in business), University of Houston, 1969-82

Assistant professor of industrial engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, 1968-69

Instructor, industrial engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, 1967-68

Research technician and instrumentation engineer, Monsanto Company, 1956-65

Education

Associate of science degree in chemistry, Lee College, 1961

Bachelor of science degree in mathematics, University of Houston, 1964

Doctor of philosophy in operations research and statistics, Texas A&M University, College Station, 1968

NCAA committee service

Presidents Commission, 1994-97 (Division I chair)

Division I Task Force to Review the NCAA Membership Structure, 1994-96

Special Committee to Study NCAA Marketing, Licensing and Promotional Activities, 1995-97 (chair)

Division I Board of Directors, 1998-2003

Executive Committee, 1998-2003 (chair)

NCAA 2000 (chair)

Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues, 1998-2000

NCAA Presidential Search Committee (chair)