Through photography, through history and through the words of an experienced observer, a book commemorating the NCAA Centennial attempts to portray a "bigger, better picture" of a complex Association.

That's the primary goal of the book's author, Joseph N. Crowley, former president of the University of Nevada, Reno.

And as the publication date nears for "In the Arena: The NCAA's First Century," the former NCAA leader believes the challenge has been met.

"Given the inevitable limitations of space in doing a 100-year history, you probably make your choices a lot more carefully," said Crowley, who was active for nearly 20 years in NCAA governance, serving as membership president during the mid-1990s.

"If at least one of the guidelines you're following in making your choices is to build a broader, better understanding of the Association, its history, its strengths and weaknesses and challenges, etc., then I feel reasonably satisfied that a bigger, better picture has been drawn."

That picture reveals itself across a canvas of about 250 pages, featuring not just a recounting of the Association's history -- calling particularly upon Crowley's insider perspective in identifying the major issues of the past 25 years -- but also a mix of historical and contemporary feature photography.

The book, scheduled for publication in late December, will be distributed to all delegates attending next month's Convention and various campus and conference officials, as well as to student-athletes participating in final rounds of 2006 NCAA championships. Crowley will be on hand at the Convention to sign copies of the book for those interested.

Primary themes

The first two chapters of the seven-chapter book offer a fresh take on a more detailed exploration of the first 75 years of NCAA history that was written in 1981 for the Association by Jack Falla. Crowley considers the forces and factors that led to the Association's founding in 1906.

The opening chapters also introduce two important themes that recur throughout the book -- which Crowley identifies as "amateurism and academic primacy" -- and discuss the motivations of early Association leaders as they attempted to put those ideals into practice.

Subsequent chapters switch to a more subject-based exploration of NCAA history, first through discussion of the Association's regulatory and enforcement role as it developed under the supervision of the first executive director, Walter Byers. It then addresses the organizational, legal and governmental challenges, external influences and the struggle for diversity and inclusion that spurred real -- and, Crowley believes, underappreciated -- reforms during the past quarter century.

Crowley concedes that while the Association's history depicts an organization that has moved forward with the changing of time, it doesn't always portray actions occurring in the spirit of reform.

"I tried to make the point (in an early outline of the book) that the NCAA had been a reform-oriented organization since its birth," he said. "I think I used the term 'born in reform' -- I liked that term, and that may have led me to think that reform should be maybe the most basic theme."

However, as Crowley combed through volumes of material compiled with the significant assistance of former NCAA research director Ursula Walsh and NCAA librarian Ellen Summers, he settled on a more complex view of the Association -- one that acknowledges periods of time in which the NCAA more often merely adjusted to the times than initiated change.

It's that perspective that brings balance to the book, acknowledging ups and downs, triumphs and failings, in the Association's history.

Celebrating the NCAA

Still, appropriately for a book celebrating the NCAA's role in the shaping of intercollegiate athletics as a major force in American society, the ups and the triumphs are numerous.

"It goes back to the reason in the early '90s that I suggested to (then NCAA executive director) Ced Dempsey that the NCAA needed an updated history," Crowley said. "As I got closer to the Association and saw it through the eyes of a beholder and practitioner from so many vantage points -- as a member of the Council and Presidents Commission, as president, as a chair of committees and so on -- I saw there is a vast sea of ignorance and misunderstanding in the American public and for that matter amongst the media about the kind of organization it is, had been and could be."

Through Crowley's words and through images gathered by Rich Clarkson and Associates and photography editor Jennifer Finch, the book portrays the excitement of intercollegiate sports, the variety of competitive opportunities, and the diversity of the Association's thousands of volunteers.

It particularly shines a spotlight on student-athletes -- not only through the photography but through Crowley's exploration of how the Association sometimes has struggled to maintain its focus on the student-athlete ideal as visualized by its founders, but over time has succeeded in doing so.

"I'd hope that student-athletes, in reading this, could see where it all came from...that they would see the interest was there, and then how we over the years fell away from that particular understanding of the student-athlete and got ourselves into a world of hurt and a world of troubles," Crowley said.

"And despite the commentaries by the cynics," he added, "that we have kind of come back. You can't change what we see sports doing for us now as opposed to what those early folks hoped for, but you can want to have a value placed on the student-athlete that, ethically at least, is similar to the kind of value that was placed on student-athletes in the early days."

As Crowley worked to construct his "bigger, better picture," the longtime political scientist found himself addressing some of his own admitted areas of "ignorance and misunderstanding." He found the nearly two years he spent actively researching and writing the book deeply educational.

He immersed himself in both the "prehistory" and early days of the Association, and found himself particularly engrossed in the development of women's sports in America, which he discusses in detail in the book.

Crowley was most fascinated and surprised by "the sheer quantity and breadth of the litigative efforts through the years" that have confronted the NCAA, particularly during the past quarter century.

"It interests me as a student of politics," he said. "It seems to me, not simply with respect to the Association but generally, that the increasing reliance on litigation to solve problems -- which too frequently manifests itself as an absence of focus on accommodation -- in turn represents a failure of politics in this country. And in this case, in the Association.

"I'm an admirer of politics, and I believe it is democracy expressing itself in that, where you have in the NCAA and in this country a wide variety of interests, the political process is there -- as distasteful as it is for some people -- to solve problems, find middle ground and for accommodation. Litigation, though sometimes it ends in mediated settlements, is not a good substitute for the political process. I found that interesting, fascinating and disturbing."

Scholarly passion

Crowley says his work on "In the Arena" renewed a lifelong passion -- scholarship.

"To be in the NCAA library looking at those old documents was a scholarly enterprise for me, and that's part of what I started out to do as an academic person -- to be a scholar," he said.

"It reminded me a little bit -- in fall 1989, I took a leave from the university, encouraged by the board of regents, because I had served (as president) for 11 years and I'd just kind of lost the fire in the belly. I told the board, 'You don't want me to do this anymore, because I just don't have it in me to perform.' The board leadership said 'take a leave instead.' "

He spent the next five months at Oxford University, and made daily journeys to that institution's Bodleian Library.

"It was just going to the library every day and just reading, reading, reading, including old material -- books that were 100 or more years old that had never been opened -- that was so rewarding and so far away from what I had been doing. And when I finished that leave and went back to the job, I was renewed. And I wrote a book ('No Equal in the World') based to a significant extent on that research.

"That's the feeling I had looking at those old copies of proceedings and other documents in the NCAA library, and that was just so much fun, as well as part of my learning experience."