In a February memorandum to Division I coaches, National Association of Basketball Coaches President Pat Kennedy wrote that successful passage of the revised basketball proposals "may well come down to the level of trust the NCAA membership has in the integrity of basketball coaches."

"We coaches are prepared to accept the responsibility and be fully accountable," Kennedy said. "We want to be a significant part of keeping our student-athletes in school longer and increasing their academic success. These proposals will help us do that."

If the package is successful, it may go a long way in bridging a trust gap between coaches and administrators that has simmered over the years.

The gap appeared wide as recently as July when many in the Division I governance structure suspected coaches of pulling a fast break when they submitted the original package. At the time, the concerns from the Division I membership weren't even so much about the contents of the package as they were about how it was submitted in the first place. Some Council members were bothered that it had not percolated up through the conference, committee or cabinet structure as is usually the case with other legislation.

But it may have been a matter of a compressed time frame more than a case of coaches trying to outmaneuver the system. Four months earlier, NCAA President Myles Brand had extended an unprecedented invitation to the NABC and to the Women's Basketball Coaches Association to build a recruiting-regulation template. In essence, what Brand did was ask coaches to draw up their best play. Coaches welcomed that olive branch alone as a clear break from a tradition of having to react to rules that were developed in many cases without their input.

Both the NABC and the WBCA assembled representative committees that worked overtime to compose a recruiting and access utopia. While the packages did not originate in NCAA committees or cabinets as some administrators would have preferred, the Council was asked to consider them as being among this year's body of legislative proposals. Though some Council members did so reluctantly, they agreed.

That's when the real work for the NABC began.

"This was really the first time coaches had been offered to write down what they'd like to have," said NABC Deputy Executive Director Reggie Minton. "Granted, what resulted might have been grandiose, and not everyone was ready for everything that was on that sheet of paper.

"We understand that, but we think what's left still represents a great first step. We're putting it out there, and we're listening -- we didn't pout or say, 'Well, it's all or nothing.' We are interested in the betterment of the game and the young people who play it."

The prospects for the package appeared most grim in January when one proposal after another met Management Council defeat. But spirited debate hours before adjournment brought a motion to reconsider, after which at least the core proposals sent out for comment. As one Council member put it, it was only fair for the membership to be the deciding body in April rather than the Council in January.

"We had to allow our membership to first embrace the effort, regardless of the eventual outcome," said the Council's Gene Smith, recently announced as the new athletics director at Ohio State University. "To shoot down the NABC's effort without allowing our total membership to embrace it would have been wrong."

Davidson College Athletics Director Jim Murphy said the Council reacted as it did perhaps because of a general lack of trust between administrators and coaches that he said is inherent in the athletics culture. That trust gap manifests itself, Murphy said, when administrators judge proposed legislation by how it can be circumvented by a coach.

"There may not even be an ulterior motive, but we often start with a negative perspective rather than positive, and that is unfortunate," he said. "It's a whole lot easier for an administrator to say no, because we know how to manage that."

It has been easier in the past for faculty members to say no, too, because they often see what coaches want as being diametrically opposed to academic pursuits.

"The coach is always under the pressure to win. They're not a deceitful group of individuals. Those are good men and women out there coaching across the country. But sometimes the pressures they face from an athletics standpoint conflict with what might be in the academic best interests of the student-athlete," said Wofford College Faculty Athletics Representative Ted Monroe, who chairs the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association legislative review group.

"Most faculty reps have developed relationships with coaches on their own campus, and for the most part they trust those coaches and have respect for them. But at the same time we recognize that the competitive nature of college athletics is always putting coaches in the position of wanting to do more -- wanting to spend more time with student-athletes, more practices, more recruiting. It's not surprising that the costs of all those pressures to win is that sometimes coaches as a group have in the past tended to lose sight of the student side of student-athletes."

But Murphy said the new package mitigates the negative perspective by reducing the risk of abuse. For example, he said, the tryout rule triggered tension because there was reasonable risk of manipulating student-athletes. "The risk outweighed the benefit in that case," Murphy said. "Now, though, the NABC has made some progress in taking the initial proposals to a point where they still benefit students, but the risk of circumvention is negligible.

"Some of the proposals take a little bit of a leap of faith, but is the risk manageable? I think so. The package has been managed to a point where the risk of some of these proposals getting out of hand is pretty manageable and the value of circumventing the rule is not great."

Kennedy, who coaches at Towson University, said the trust gap often is exacerbated by instances in which a coach at a high-profile program abuses the rules.

"Every once in a while, there's no doubt that we've shot ourselves in the foot," he said. "But I've recruited a lot of kids over my 30 years, and when I go to a youngster's home, I still frame my talk around academics, people and athletics. That's my recruiting speech to kids. And I will guarantee you that 90 percent of coaches do the same thing -- they center their messages on developing this person as a student and as an athlete.

"Yet, some administrators believe coaches want this increased access as more time to coach. That's why this package has been important as a complete package. Now we have the Academic Progress Rate based on eligibility and retention, and the NABC package helps in both areas. The more access coaches have, the more positive influence we're going to have on these guys' academic performance."

-- Gary T. Brown