It was from the women of these two couples -- my mother, Alice Harrison, and Elizabeth Cameron -- that I acquired my lifelong fascination (some might call it obsession) with baseball. Alice rooted passionately for the Pittsburgh Pirates, not an easy enthusiasm during that difficult period in their history, while Liz rooted just as steadfastly for the Brooklyn Dodgers during their most successful era.

Why the Brooklyn Dodgers? I never questioned it as a kid, but I later came to realize than many black families across the United States rooted for the Dodgers because it was they who brought Jackie Robinson, the first black ballplayer of the modern era, to the major leagues.

Twenty years later, while I was writing my doctoral dissertation on baseball and its relationship to American culture (you see, it is a lifelong obsession), I came to understand that Jackie Robinson's experience with the Dodgers reflected an important two-way relationship in sports. Sports not only reflect significant cultural changes in American culture (in this case the integration of American society after World War II); they also lead it.

I firmly believe that the NCAA takes that obligation as seriously as I do. Our shared enterprise combines sports, with this traditionally groundbreaking role, and higher education, which has just as strongly played a groundbreaking role in leading change in American society. James Meredith's role in integrating the University of Mississippi in the 1950s is eerily reminiscent of Jackie Robinson's role a decade earlier.

Today both college athletes and colleges and universities themselves represent the wealth of opportunities available to Americans regardless of race, class or gender. Among our many accomplishments, this is the one of which we should be most proud. And it is one from which we should not shrink.

Most historians and observers of college athletics over the past quarter century would point to the rise of football and men's basketball as mass media entertainment vehicles as the most significant change of that period. There is much truth to this observation: The nationwide following these sports have engendered, through television and the Internet, is an incredible phenomenon in American life. The 11-year, $6.2 billion CBS contract to televise the NCAA men's basketball tournament is just the most visible of many manifestations of this popularity.

I would argue, however, that the NCAA's most significant success during this period has not been in those two sports, but in the growth and importance of women's athletics. Title IX of the 1974 education amendments established the legal imperative to provide equal intercollegiate sports opportunities to women. It is clearly the legal bedrock on which this success is built, and not every college or university has been equally enlightened in accepting this principle. But the NCAA has blazed a clear and admirable path. Hundreds of thousands of student-athletes are better for it.

Those challenges are still with us as leaders of the NCAA governance structure. Our campuses and our athletics teams now reflect more than ever in our history the vast wealth and breadth of American society. Despite this, we are faced with difficult and vexatious questions. If a large percentage of Division I football players are black, why are there so fewblack head coaches? Since only 1.3 percent of Americans are American Indians, and many of our students have never known an Indian well, what sort of educators are we if allow our athletics teams to be represented by stereotyped images of Indians? In an age increasingly worried by the abuse of alcohol and other drugs by its college-age population, should we allow beer and wine advertising to be associated with NCAA athletics?

I chose those three topics because they are just three of the most publicized societal issues facing the NCAA governance structure today. The NCAA Executive Committee and the division presidential bodies have struggled with each of them. At the heart of each is the role that we, as an association of colleges and universities, should play in promoting or legislating change. In debating and discussing each matter, we have tried to weigh the role the Association should play with the role better played by individual institutions.

Our predilection is almost always to favor the autonomy of individual universities. As presidents and chancellors, we are especially sensitive to what can be best accomplished at the institutional level. In the case of encouraging more black head coaches, for instance, we have urged the NCAA to provide more developmental and networking opportunities, but we realize that it will take individual Branch Rickeys on our campuses to see the individual talents of the Jackie Robinsons we are developing.

We also have reached the conclusion that combating alcohol abuse, the most disruptive behavioral problem on college campuses today, is best done on the institutional level -- since institutions and conferences control almost all of the advertising related to college sports. We have urged them to re-examine both their policies and their practices with a view toward limiting or abolishing such advertising. In the one area where the Association has control of this advertising, we have reaffirmed our policy to allow only a very small number of commercials for beer or wine.

We also followed this principle of leading by example but reserving ultimate responsibility in the case of Indian mascots and symbols. We have urged those 18 institutions that still have Indian mascots or imagery among our nearly 1,300 members to re-examine their use, but we have not dictated their abolition. We have said, however, that those institutions may not use their mascots or imagery in NCAA tournaments, nor -- after a suitable grace period -- will they be allowed to host tournament games or matches.

In all three of those important issues, we believe as an Association that we are taking our responsibility to lead society seriously and, at the same time, respecting the role that individual institutions play in making change happen, step by step. In doing so, I believe we reflect a long and proud tradition in American sports.

Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford, serves as chair of the NCAA Executive Committee.