There is an old saying that goes: People support reform as long as they don't have to change. Well, the recently adopted NCAA reforms will put that adage to the test.

Division I presidents and chancellors received notice of just how much change is needed with the release of the first year of Academic Progress Rate (APR) data that indicate the current academic performance of the more than 5,100 Division I teams. These data show that more than 7 percent of teams are not meeting minimum prescribed standards, and that more than 50 percent of Division I institutions have at least one team not up to academic par.

While the 7 percent figure may not seem alarming considering the total number of teams, the highest number of programs that do not meet the recently established APR cut score of 925 -- under which teams are subject to contemporaneous penalty -- are in football (62), baseball (61) and men's basketball (58). This is where change must occur.

It is clear that the vast majority of Division I presidents and chancellors support reform. Increased initial-eligibility and progress-toward-degree standards and the data-based APR system to measure academic performance and penalize under-performing teams moved swiftly and convincingly through the legislative process. With that foundation in place, the Board of Directors' adoption in January of the cut score in the APR under which teams will be subject to grant-in-aid reductions beginning next year put the reform structure in motion. Now it is time for the accompanying change in behavior at the institutional level that reform was designed to accomplish.

What behavior must change? First, it is time to eliminate the notion that it is acceptable to matriculate prospective student-athletes without proper regard for their potential for educational success. While it is unreasonable to expect that every student-athlete who enrolls in a Division I institution will leave with a degree, it is not unreasonable to expect that all student-athletes will receive the educational benefits to which they are entitled while enrolled. In other words, in return for the commitment the student-athlete makes to the athletics success of the program, the institution owes a reciprocal commitment to that student-athlete for his or her academic progress.

The reforms now in place go a long way toward enhancing that relationship. Because the point scale that comprises the APR rewards eligibility and retention equally, programs must now take well-thought-out chances on at-risk prospects because the consequences for those prospects' academic failure will be serious. Under the reform structure, student-athletes who are neither academically eligible nor retained are now far too costly for programs that are accustomed to recruiting such players to continue that practice.

There will be some who cry "foul" because they believe that to win, they need the athletically gifted prospect who may have more regard for a professional athletics career than an education. After all, they will say, coaches often are hired and fired according to their team's performance on the court, not in the classroom. But for coaches to succeed under the new paradigm, they will need to recruit academically motivated student-athletes. And frankly, the new standards and the level of institutional accountability now in place also will require a change of direction for the ways in which coaches are evaluated.

Beginning next year for teams that do not meet the required 925 APR to avoid being subject to penalty, the grant-in-aid of those athletes who leave an institution as an academic casualty cannot be replaced for one year. Division I-A football programs could lose as many as nine scholarships in one year, and men's basketball teams under the cut score could lose up to two of their 13 grants-in-aid. Such penalties are harsher than those applied in some major infractions cases.

As serious as these penalties are, the goal is to change behavior, because even more restrictive penalties await those programs that do not change. Once four years of APR data are accumulated, a set of historically based penalties ranging from reductions in scholarships and recruiting to postseason bans and restricted membership will be available. Thus, it would not be in a team's best interests to "become comfortable" with losing a scholarship or two because they do not use their full complement anyway, or to think that continuing to recruit academically at-risk players is "worth the risk" of the contemporaneous penalty.

It may be that the best way to regard the reform structure is not by consciously trying to achieve the 925 cut score or designing strategies to "avoid" penalties, but to concentrate on the academic progress of student-athletes. That is the simple -- and correct -- goal. The reason the initial-eligibility and progress-toward-degree standards were adopted in the first place is because research told us that those benchmarks were the best indicators of the ultimate in academic success: graduation. If institutions follow these benchmarks, as many already do, contemporaneous penalties or historically based penalties will not be an issue.

To think of academic reform as retaining a behavioral status quo and then avoiding penalty by steering student-athletes toward less-demanding majors or coursework that requires little effort would be a mistake. The integrity of the faculty is the ultimate safeguard when it comes to the academic curriculum available for all students; thus, cutting academic corners, or worse -- cheating -- is the wrong course of action.

The idea of academic reform is not simply to threaten or penalize institutions, but to redirect the focus on the educational mission of intercollegiate athletics. In my State of the Association address at the recent NCAA Convention, I spoke of four commonly held but generally inaccurate perceptions regarding intercollegiate athletics -- the first of which was that college sports is more about sports than college. Graduation rates in football and men's basketball over time have added fuel to this myth, but the academic reforms in place will mitigate the misperception.

However, reform in and of itself will not solve the problem without the will from institutions to change behavior. The myth that college sports is more about sports than college will be difficult to refute in the future if the very institutions that supported reform are not willing to change.

We have eligibility standards in place that set the proper path for student-athlete academic success, and we have a data-driven metric that provides institutional accountability for that success. In essence, we have a playbook for academic success.

Like any other well-coached and well-disciplined team, all we need to do now is execute.

Myles Brand is president of the NCAA.