Paula M. Krebs, faculty athletics representative
Wheaton College (Massachusetts)
Chronicle of Higher Education

"We faculty members should establish coach-like bonds with student-athletes, not to compete with the athletics department for hearts and minds, but to acknowledge the students' dual identities and make that work to their academic advantage. We can make explicit that we expect as much of them as their coaches do. We can talk more with their coaches to let them know how their athletes are doing, but also to let them know that coaches are not the only ones who care about these students.

"Professors should find out who among our majors are athletes and reach out to them, bring them into an intellectual environment that can offer some of the rewards that sports do. We can call coaches when issues arise, explaining why it's important for student-athletes to miss practice occasionally to attend departmental events. We can even attend the occasional competition, just to show that we're not one-sided and that we recognize the joys of our students' athletics lives. ...

"I think many students perform better in the classroom when they can organize their time around both intellectual and physical work. What I worry about is a culture in which the two are increasingly seen as oppositional. In my experience, it is coaches and faculty members who see athletics and academics that way, not students. And if students can find the constructive complementarity in the student-athlete identity, surely their professors and coaches can, too."

Diversity issues

Floyd Keith, executive director
Black Coaches Association
St. Petersburg Times

Discussing the lack of black coaches in college football:

"I think there's a sensitivity that's growing as to the extent of this problem and the soon-to-be-realized reality that today, if you are an African-American, you've got a three-times better chance of being a general in the United States Army than you do being a head coach in football at any Division I program. Now that's sad. But it's a stark reality and it's true."

Graduation rates

Linda Bensel-Meyers, professor
University of Denver
Indianapolis Star

"Universities are under even more pressure to provide academic shortcuts for athletes to keep them eligible. Clearly, the graduation rates for athletes will increasingly represent a different quality of education than other students receive."

Student-athlete first

Dee Outlaw, director of athletics
University of West Alabama
Birmingham News

"I think in the past, the (NCAA's) answer was always no and you had to prove yourself (innocent). I think now the answer is, 'We think the answer's yes and let's see why it's yes.' "

Recruiting

Bill Blankenship, head football coach
Union (Oklahoma) High School
Athletic Management

Discussing emergency legislation adopted in August that restricts activities surrounding official visits:

"From a high-school standpoint, I'm much more concerned about how early colleges start recruiting than what they do when they take recruits on a visit. The reality is that the recruiting process is a sales process, and these new measures take away some of the fun that seems to me to be fairly harmless.

"I would rather see changes made to when scholarships can be offered. There's no limit on when schools can extend an offer, so a blue-chip player is getting offers very early in his junior year, or even earlier. Once they've earned a scholarship, some of them go into protect mode. It's an issue we've seen in basketball for a while. Now I think we're starting to see it in football."