As the current academic-reform cycle winds down this spring with the Division I Board of Directors' consideration of the incentives/disincentives structure, the focus of reform will begin to shift from the academic aspects of college sports to the financial aspects. Much has been made of the latter lately, with issues such as conference realignment, access to Division I-A postseason football, increases in athletics expenditures and the pressure to win leading people to speculate that "college sports is a business."

There is a significant and fundamental difference between the phrases "the business of college sports" and "college sports is a business." To be sure, higher education and, indeed, intercollegiate athletics have business elements they must address, and they must perform that function well. Bills have to be paid, salaries have to be provided and difficult personnel decisions must be made. Some individual sports programs will have to subsidize others. But similar business obligations face organized religion, prominent charities and many other enterprises that rely on major revenue streams to do good work.

Our new strategic plan says nothing about making money. Instead, it says that the Association should exist to promote the well-being of student-athletes and the college game. It says that intercollegiate athletics in general should provide a unique learning experience that is a valuable part of a college education.

Of course, many critics of intercollegiate athletics look only at revenue and selected expenses when they discuss this issue. They point to the Association's long-term $6 billion contract with CBS Sports and ESPN and say that defines the nature of the Association. What they don't say is that the Association returns about 95 percent of its revenue to its membership through cash distributions, championships and program administration, and that those funds are then used to support student-athletes in a multitude of sports. They also don't say that millions of fans would never get to see their favorite teams playing for the right to be called national collegiate champion at 88 championships in 23 sports if it weren't for those contracts.

If college athletics is a business, it is a failed business. In Division I-A, there are, at most, two or three dozen institutions at which revenues from athletics match or exceed athletics spending, even with the annual distributions from local and national television contracts.

This point may seem a bit abstract, but we define our enterprise as a business at our peril. The one factor that would bring about the ruin of college athletics would be to pay student-athletes. It would be the ultimate acknowledgement that we have failed in our mission and have instead become just another franchise in the entertainment industry rather than a valued and valuable component of higher education. If college sports is a "business," who is the work force?

That said, it is important for the Association over the next several years to scrutinize the way intercollegiate athletics conducts its financial activities.

The future focus on the business aspects of intercollegiate athletics will largely be on how college sports is funded. The way money is budgeted in athletics should be more integrated with the way money is budgeted in the rest of the university. Athletics should not function independently from the university -- but the irony is that the current Division I philosophy of athletics being self-sustaining has supported that outcome. In many instances, in fact, the argument of balancing athletics budgets without subsidies drives the arms race because it forces athletics directors and others to make investments, for example, in facilities and coaches' salaries. Unfortunately, as many have found, those investments most often do not lead to increased revenue.

We have to agree that, first of all, intercollegiate athletics does contribute to the educational mission of the institution, most especially by providing developmental activities and benefits for the student-athlete. To the extent that athletics does in fact complement or directly support the educational mission, institutions should be prepared to allocate funding. In that regard, the decisions about funding should go through the normal university channels. Once those decisions are made based upon the educational value of athletics, and the institution understands and is willing to provide subsidies, then the pressure on the athletics directors and others to invest in facilities or outrageous salaries for alleged potential gain diminishes.

Such an approach not only makes good common sense, it makes good business sense.

This is all another way of saying that the athletics department has to be integrated into the institution -- not only academically, but also in terms of the operating budget. Athletics must be part of the entire institution and not an independent operation that is expected to be self-sustaining.

In the future, the answers about financing college sports will hinge upon the role of intercollegiate athletics in our colleges and universities. It is a misperception to think that by investing more and more in college sports, institutions reach the point of breaking even. The axiom that you have to spend money to make money has been elusive for most athletics programs and ruinous for some. For the vast majority of schools, that goal is out of reach and should not be the driving force. For most institutions, we have to find a way to support intercollegiate athletics directly from university budgets.

Indeed, the Association must take care of business while carrying on the most important business of all: the responsibility for developing tomorrow's leaders.

Myles Brand is president of the NCAA.