University of Arizona President Peter Likins, who has the distinction of chairing the newly created Presidential Task Force on the Future of Intercollegiate Athletics, put it bluntly when he described the newest dilemma facing big-time college sports: "The rate of growth of expenditures and revenues in intercollegiate athletics simply is not sustainable."

Likins believes just uttering those words ought to give thoughtful college and university presidents pause.

"We're looking at two scenarios, both worrisome," he said of the foreboding fiscal forecast. "One, we can see the possibility of fiscal crisis for one school, then another, as their revenues at some point falter with expenditures still growing. That's especially a problem for those schools with expenditures based on debt service. If you think solely in terms of the economics of the enterprise, any business person has to worry about the sustainability.

"Two, we have to wonder how responsible presidents and chancellors are obliged< to behave as they try to escalate the revenues and mitigate the expenditure growth."

Those two phenomena will drive discussion for the group charged by NCAA President Myles Brand to continue a strategic and systematic march toward reform. The group follows another presidential task force focused on academic reform that was assembled three years ago and initiated what became the most sweeping academic overhaul in NCAA history. Now the focus has turned to the escalating financial pressures that Likins and other presidents claim are pushing intercollegiate athletics toward sports entertainment and away from the educational mission of colleges and universities.

Brand formally announced the task force January 14 in a speech before the City Club of Cleveland. He named Likins to lead the group of more than two dozen college and university presidents and chancellors and two or three individuals representing university governing boards -- a roster not yet finalized. The task force officially is charged with exploring the alignment of intercollegiate athletics with the mission, values and goals of higher education in such areas as fiscal responsibility, commercialism, organizational structure and transparency of athletics operations.

"Frankly," said Likins, "those issues are far easier to talk about than they are to solve."

Indeed, Likins said, the task force on academic reform at least had the luxury of legislative-based solutions not likely to be afforded to Likins' group, since regulatory measures in the fiscal realm typically trigger antitrust concerns. "We do not anticipate a substantial body of regulations coming from this process," he acknowledged.

Not cost containment

So far, there has been more talk of what the task force will not do. During his announcement, Brand reiterated that this is not a cost-containment effort -- far from it. Nor it is a warning shot to institutions to stop growing athletics departments, or to ignore market-driven factors that escalate coaches' salaries.

"Rather," Brand said, "it is an argument to moderate the rate of growth to what the revenue supports."

Likins concurred. "We have to make a serious effort quickly to elevate awareness on the part of presidents as to the economic trends of athletics and the dangers inherent in those trends," he said.

The trends to which Likins refers are the desires, even expectations, for Division I-A athletics programs in particular to be self-sufficient. He said there are a few, perhaps a dozen, athletics programs that are and can continue to be wholly self-supporting. But for the large majority of programs, there is increased ability to enhance revenues, especially through the sale of media rights, but not at rates higher than that of other parts of the university. Many foresee media contracts and other revenue sources leveling off, which could pose a crisis if expectations don't level off commensurately.

Likins said, "If you add it all up, the expenses and the revenues of athletics are growing twice as fast as the average elsewhere in the university. Just saying that should create some sense of concern because that's obviously not sustainable."

Likins noted that while athletics comprises just a few percent of the operating budget at a typical I-A school, "still, if it's growing twice as fast as the other sectors, that creates the likelihood that over time it could become problematic -- you'd lose your sense of balance." Likins proposed that a responsible university leader would rather maintain a sense of proportion.

"Athletics is important, but not the primary purpose of the institution," he said. "In turn, athletics revenues are important for sustaining athletics, though not the dominant part of the university's revenue stream, and it has to be kept in some kind of balance."

Mission alignment

To that end, Likins said, "fiscal responsibility" doesn't mean the kind of offer made to the school's next football coach. "The point is how you handle the totality of your responsibilities," he said.

To illustrate the point, Likins cited recent trends in sports sponsorship -- and the decisions athletics departments have made to discontinue some sports -- as examples of fiscal decisions that may conflict with the purpose of intercollegiate athletics.

"The primary purpose of intercollegiate athletics is human development, helping young people learn the lessons of life that can be found only in high-level competition. If we forget that -- if we imagine that the primary purpose is to entertain the fans -- then we are warping our mission and distorting our values, and sending signals to student-athletes that are contrary to our primary purpose," Likins said.

Likins noted recent reductions in many men's sports that are important to the United States' competitiveness in the Olympics. Men's gymnastics, for example, is down to 19 teams. "Those decisions to eliminate teams are economically driven," he said. "No athletics director wants to eliminate a team. So why is that happening? It's happening because those sports don't generate revenue. Athletics departments increasingly have to control their costs, and they tend to invest in the sports that generate revenue.

"I do not believe that athletics is inherently in conflict with an academic mission of a university. If done right, athletics is about developing young people, and the lessons learned are those that are hard to learn in the classroom. We cannot allow ourselves to drift into a mind-set in which the desire to generate revenues drives decisions."

Likins said those financial pressures have reduced the number of sports teams and thus cut competitive opportunities for student-athletes, most of whom participate in sports other than football and basketball. He calls that a "cultural distortion of values," in which revenue sports actually counter the university mission of development through athletics participation.

"Most student-athletes are involved in sports for which fans don't pay a lot of money or attention," Likins said. "Why do we offer those sports? We offer them because that's our primary mission, the development of young men and women. But the economics of the enormously successful football and basketball programs have driven us to isolate other programs financially. That's when you begin to worry about the cultural distortion of values."

As for what can be done about it, Likins said he's not sure his group will come up with any magic answers. "But at least we're going to explore the problems and see if we can sensitize people to the trends that we think are not sustainable," he said.

"As economic pressures grow, will schools that have had to subsidize their athletics programs be prepared to increase those subsidies? I don't think so. And for those that don't subsidize, then when revenues fall below expenses, are they prepared to start subsidizing? Probably not. These are tough economic times for universities. There is no financial capability to increase subsidies for athletics."

Likins also presided at Lehigh University, which has an athletics department with broad offerings that are primarily subsidized rather than self-sustaining, like other institutions in the Patriot League or the Ivy Group. Likins said he looks at such schools enviously but is quick to acknowledge that a Lehigh model and the self-sufficiency paradigm of schools such as Arizona probably are mutually exclusive.

"There's no good way to get there from where Division I-A currently is," he said. "In fact the trend is the opposite. Everyone wants to be I-A -- the high-level but high-cost athletics competition. If nothing else, maybe we can make it clear over the next year to aspiring institutions that I-A is not nirvana. Exciting as it is, if it's not sustainable, then someone's going to get hurt."

That's the message the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Intercollegiate Athletics wants to send over the next 12 to 24 months. But it will be up to the overall Division I membership to heed the call.

"This can be incorrectly perceived as an attack on football and basketball, or as an attack on coaches' salaries. It's neither," Likins said. "This is a collection of thoughtful people who are well-informed and have the data in their hands -- and who love college sports and understand the value athletics competition adds to the development of young people -- but who also cannot help but see the trends and wonder what will happen if they continue unaltered."