It's one of the oldest problems in the NCAA.

The Association's founders concerned themselves first with ensuring safe competition, then with making sure that sports fit within universities' educational mission. But it wasn't long before they also began worrying about the actual name of the organization.

It was founded in 1906 as the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS), but as its membership expanded westward over the next four years, its officers thought a more descriptive name was needed.

In 1910, they considered naming it the National Intercollegiate Athletic Association, then did some editing on the fly during that year's Convention:

"On account of its really national character, and incidentally, to secure a more distinctive name, it is proposed to call this organization in the future, 'the National Collegiate Athletic Association,' " said Palmer Pierce of the U.S. Military Academy, the NCAA's first membership president.

Ever since, as the NCAA has expanded in size, authority and -- from time to time, notoriety -- it has struggled with labeling and defining the many components of the enterprise.

As struggles go, the Association's members don't spend a lot of time talking or thinking about it. Today, just like in 1906, the NCAA tackles the biggest issues -- academics, amateurism, recruiting, finances and eligibility -- first.

But it's been a persistent problem just the same, consistently popping up through NCAA history as the organization has named everything from its competitive divisions to its committees and programs, and the Association's increasing public visibility has forced greater internal awareness of how it describes itself.

After all, the language the NCAA uses to define itself, both its governance structure and its core attributes, goes a long way in defining its image.

Inside perspective

As an organization aligned with higher education, it's not surprising that the NCAA shares a nomenclature problem with universities and colleges.

"It's very common in higher education to name things from the inside perspective -- we think about, organizationally, how did this thing come about, and then we start thinking about names that reflect the institution's point of view," said Bob Brock, president of Educational Marketing Group, Inc., a Colorado-based firm that advises universities and colleges on developing institutional identities.

Like many of the institutions that Brock works with, the NCAA typically has named committees and programs to accurately describe what they do -- at least as it's understood by those who do the naming. Sometimes, that's where the trouble starts.

"Oftentimes, institutions or organizations create, unknowingly or unwittingly, great problems down the road by their naming conventions," Brock said.

"If I had to offer advice to organizations such as the NCAA on naming conventions in general, it would be to get the outside perspective before moving forward. It can so quickly get you into deep trouble with your audiences if they don't see the world the way you do."

In the NCAA's case, those audiences are varied, ranging from its own 1,000-plus member institutions at different levels of competition, to student-athletes, educators, legislators and, certainly not least, the general public.

"In terms of nomenclature, keep in mind that people don't understand what the NCAA is about," said Jeff Jacobs, a brand strategist with Landor and Associates, which has conducted research for the Association. "Most don't know its mission, goals and purpose. Most don't even understand the fact that the NCAA is a representative body. They just see the NCAA as a separate body, like Major League Baseball or the NFL."

It's a problem that the national office staff clearly is grappling with.

How will it play?

"Obviously at the staff level, and then in our committees, we want descriptors that are going to resonate and are going to be meaningful," said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice-president for membership services. "Increasingly, we ask ourselves how those monikers are going to play in the public -- more so than we've ever done in the past.

"That's maybe a reflection on the nature of our business. When we think about service, we think not only about serving our members but serving the public, so we want to get something that's descriptive."

The concern was evident during the recent introduction of the Academic Progress Rate (APR), the Association's new Division I measurement of student-athletes' classroom performance leading to graduation -- and perhaps the most widely discussed new NCAA initiative in years.

"I think we're all a little shocked by the attention that it's grabbed," said Lennon, who has been one of the most visible Association representatives in explaining the new program. "I've heard reporters say it's done what graduation rates have never been able to do -- people say they understand it and are talking about it in meaningful ways on our campuses."

That level of understanding didn't just happen by accident; NCAA staff members spent hours in telephone conferences with various audiences explaining what the APR is and how it will be determined -- an effort aided by the national office's public affairs staff.

"We found the opportunity to explain the APR with media and our membership, which was unprecedented so far as I know, to be very helpful," Lennon said. "It just set the table for better-informed stories, and an improved response from our membership, to get a consistent message out."

However, in most other respects, the APR debuted in much the same way as countless other NCAA initiatives through the years. It was developed through a multitiered, complicated committee structure, and members of those committees guided the staff in all aspects of its creation -- including its naming.

"If you were to ask who touched 'APR' from a naming perspective, we even had members of the (Division I) Board of Directors chime in," Lennon said. "We went from staff to PR to a committee made up of athletics directors, to the Board of Directors -- all had a hand in naming it."

Lennon says the process is more collaborative than ever before -- including involving the Association's public relations staff earlier in the effort. Still, it remains an internal process, and successfully creating the program remains a higher priority than naming or describing it.

Misunderstanding and misuse

Such a process normally results in accurate naming -- but also occasionally may result in misunderstanding, or even misuse, of that name.

"We think everyone sees the world as we do, and this is patently not the case," said Brock, who has advised universities in selecting names to better describe educational programs. "This misperception is fairly widespread, particularly among institutions of higher education, where it's almost prevalent; on the other hand, there are some instances where the impact is actually negative -- you're spreading the wrong perception."

At times through the years, the NCAA has employed labeling or terminology that sometimes confounds observers (for example, referring to "representatives of an institution's athletics interests" while outsiders use the term "booster") or feeds perceptions of bureaucracy (for instance, the now long-defunct "Committee on Committees").

"The NCAA has taken major hits, not caused entirely by, but certainly exacerbated by, the terminology it's using," Brock suggests.

"In those cases, and I think this is an important point, the terminology tends to reflect a mind-set, if you will. Many of the sportswriters that I've read are ridiculing the NCAA mind-set, as opposed to the name itself; they're using that name as an example of an erroneous mind-set, and that's gets into a pretty damaging situation in shaping the public perception."

Lennon concedes that while some of that ridicule comes from persistent Association critics who are "pursuing their own angle and are not really willing to listen," it also comes from those who are frustrated in trying to understand what the NCAA is trying to accomplish.

"When people have the intention to seek out and better understand the truth, and they get it wrong...it means we have to do a better job of explaining what we're trying to do," he said.

Names and actions

From time to time, the Association has taken matters into its own hand, resulting in changes in the way things are named.

A few years ago, the NCAA Eligibility Committee -- hampered by widespread misunderstanding of its purpose not only by the public but within the membership -- asked the governing bodies in each of the Association's three divisions to change its name. Because that committee's role was to evaluate reasons why student-athletes lose eligibility and to determine, whenever possible, how to allow those individuals to compete, the committee's name was changed to Student-Athlete Reinstatement.

More recently, as the Association has adopted a "student-first" philosophy, giving student-athletes more of a benefit of the doubt in analyzing requests for reinstatement, that name probably has become even more reflective of the function. "In all but 1 percent of the cases, full reinstatement, or reinstatement with conditions, occurs," Lennon said. "So it's appropriate that they did that."

Pairing name changes with a shift in approach is the best way to make a new label stick in the minds of the membership and the public, Landor's Jacobs suggests.

"It (a name change) has to be introduced at the same time you're making changes to the way that you do business," he said. "When you can show some behavior change, then you can make those nomenclature changes, and make them stick."

To change or not to change

That doesn't suggest that the NCAA can simply change the name of a highly visible or even controversial committee or program -- for example, the Committee on Infractions -- even when changes do occur in ways of doing business.

"Is the committee name so well understood that you're going to create a lot of confusion by changing it?" asks Jeff Davis of St. Louis-based Fleishman-Hillard, a communications consulting firm that recently has advised the national office's public relations staff on ways to describe the NCAA's academic reform efforts. "There are names that, even though they may not be perfect, everybody since time began has understood what this committee does, and you're just going to confuse them."

Perhaps even more worrisome, such changes may create suspicion about the reasons for a new name. It's certainly possible, Brock said, to cross a line of credibility.

"I don't know where that line is, but I think all of us in communications and marketing understand that when we go back and change terminology, or change naming conventions, that we are begging an examination of why we're doing that.

"You essentially have to agree that (a change) is going to prompt some cynical response, because in fact, the cynical response may have some purchase in reality, and reflect some degree of accuracy. When you rename something, you've gotten some feedback, so you change the name to something more appropriate. The problem, of course, is that it should have been named that in the first place, but that's water under the bridge."

"You don't just want to change a name and be perceived as trying to pull the wool over somebody's eyes -- that you're just trying to recast yourself, but nothing really is changing, and it's just for damage control," Davis said. "There's may be more work to do if it just looks like a PR move."

'Shorthanding'

Of course, the Association's primary obligation is to its membership, including the student-athletes who compete for those schools as well as the administrators and coaches who work in institutional athletics programs. While many of the NCAA's identity problems stem from historical difficulties in explaining itself to the general public, the national office staff also increasingly is aware that it must communicate more clearly with the membership, too.

"We've always been accused of kind of being 'inside baseball,' in terms of how we communicate with the public, but increasingly I think that may apply to how we communicate with the membership," Lennon said. "That may just relate to the volume of activity, as well as the number of initiatives.

"When you start tossing out GSR ("graduation success rate"), APR and PTD ("progress toward degree"), all under the rubric of academic reform, even the most knowledgeable in the membership would struggle to understand exactly what you're talking about. We are a bit guilty, I think, of shorthanding that, even with our membership."

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the recent effort to inform audiences about the APR was its membership-education component. Lennon and others participated in telephone conferences specifically designed to permit administrators at member schools to hear about the new program and ask questions.

"I think we're evolving," Lennon said. "It's challenging to try to (explain) what you're doing, and do it in a way that's meaningful. But as we continue to develop programs under the strategic plan, with (NCAA) President Brand's leadership, I think this is increasingly something that we're going to be looking at."