Among highlights at the FARA Fall Forum was the presentation of the organization’s David Knight Award to former NCAA President Cedric W. Dempsey.

The Knight Award honors longtime contributions to FARA and intercollegiate athletics.

Dempsey, who served as the Association’s CEO from 1994 to 2002, was integral to FARA during his tenure. He currently operates an athletics consulting firm that has been involved with projects at the U.S. Military Academy; DePaul University; Marquette University; the University of Cincinnati; the University of Louisville; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and the California State University System.

Dempsey addressed the FARs about what he said are the five major influences that have shaped intercollegiate athletics over the last 50 years.

The first occurred in the 1960s, Dempsey said, when he noticed a fundamental change from the way academicians viewed physical education compared to coaches, who became more like technicians on how to compete in a certain sport. That shift created friction between the athletics department and other parts of the university, Dempsey said.

"It led to a different kind of person coming into intercollegiate sports," Dempsey said. "No longer did coaches have a teaching background or academic training for coaching or athletics administration."

Second was the 1968 prime-time men’s basketball game between the University of California, Los Angeles, and Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and the University of Houston and Elvin Hayes.

The game played in Houston’s Astrodome showed television executives that intercollegiate sports — particularly men’s basketball — could be a ratings bonanza.

It led to the men’s NCAA basketball tournament expanding its bracket and larger television contracts. Dempsey helped negotiate the current 11-year, $6 billion bundled-rights agreement with CBS.

Dempsey cited Title IX as the third major influence.

Creating equal opportunities for women to compete opened the door for equality and eventually led to the NCAA sponsoring women’s championships in the 1981-82 academic year.

The fourth influence also occurred in the 1970s when intercollegiate athletics leaders felt athletics departments should be as self-sufficient as possible. The belief was so strong that it became part of the Division I philosophy statement in 1978.

In 1966, Dempsey was an assistant athletics director at the University of Arizona. Fund-raising was never part of the job description, he said. Athletics facilities that needed to be built went on a priority list along with all other projects at the institution.

Dempsey made career stops at other institutions, but when he returned to Arizona in 1982 as athletics director, he was told he had to erase a $450,000 deficit, and if any new facilities were needed, the athletics department would have to raise the funds.

Ironically, the NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics in its recently released report said Division I should eliminate the clause in its philosophy statement that focuses on self-sufficiency.

In 1984, the University of Georgia and the University of Oklahoma filed an antitrust suit against the NCAA about controlling regular-season football telecasts.

Until that lawsuit went in favor of the plaintiffs, the NCAA dictated how many games would be shown on any given weekend.

The decision led to institutions and conferences brokering their own television packages, which has also led to weeknight contests.

The fifth major influence came in 1998 when a group of assistant coaches who by rule were restricted in how much salary they could earn won a $54 million settlement against the NCAA.

Dempsey served on the NCAA committee that came up with the "restricted-earnings coach" concept.

"The coaches argued they needed an entry-level position for graduate assistants," Dempsey said. "But they couldn’t be called graduate assistants, because not all the institutions had graduate programs. We went through a battle on what we would call it. Why we didn’t call it an internship I’ll never know. I take partial responsibility for that. Everyone who voted for it should take partial responsibility for that. It cost all of us $54 million."

Part of the problem was that while the position was intended for graduate assistants, some institutions used it to hire more experienced coaches to gain an advantage. That in turn created a demand for more compensation.

Dempsey noted that many people continue to criticize the NCAA for not controlling athletics costs, particularly what they perceive as out-of-control coaches’ salaries. Even a recent Congressional inquiry challenges the Association along those same lines, but Dempsey said the 1998 decision set the precedent that compensation was legally a market-driven matter at the local level and not an issue the NCAA could legislate.