The FARs who attended the institute have been charged with communicating the content, particularly the best practices, to other FARs in the conferences represented by the attendees. In this way, the presence of the FAR should be magnified on campus and within the respective conferences.

FARA’s executive committee has been instrumental in the organization’s efforts, and a persistent advocate of FARs to the NCAA. At the institute in Indianapolis, FARA Division II Vice President Bob Ziegenfus of Kutztown University of Pennsylvania reported that the NCAA has fully granted FARA’s budget request for the coming year. The NCAA deserves tremendous credit for its financial support of FARA and the resultant empowerment of the faculty athletics representative to develop and fulfill a meaningful role on campus.

We believe that the NCAA also must provide strong leadership by establishing accountability for institutions that do not have a meaningful FAR presence on campus.

NCAA President Myles Brand called on institute attendees to be effective agents for institutional control and academic integrity within the athletics department. We think it is obvious that FARA has taken this challenge seriously and is providing adequate guidance for individual FARs to take it seriously as well.

There is an unanswered question in all of this, and it must be answered by the NCAA. Namely, what can an FAR do if the institution does not empower her or him in a way sufficient to achieve the high ideals the NCAA believes the FAR should strive to see attained?

For now, the process works as follows: (a) The NCAA requires institutions to appoint an FAR, and (b) the FAR works within the institution to ensure compliance with NCAA regulations, achieve student-athlete well-being goals and maintain academic integrity.

While part (b) is exceptionally broad, the NCAA’s efforts to ensure FARs have access to best practices makes it manageable. However, there is no part (c) in the chain to describe what follows an absent or ineffective part (b). More importantly, there is nothing that forces part (b) to take place on a campus.

In this light, the NCAA’s charge to the FAR may be an empty one. At minimum, there currently is no way for the NCAA to ensure it isn’t.

The NCAA has expressed reluctance to legislate part (c) to its member institutions, arguing instead that it does legislate through its broad requirement of institutional control, while leaving the nuts and bolts to be determined at the campus level. However, some level of institutional control can likely be achieved without faculty representation. Institutional control that meaningfully involves the FAR is a different sort of institutional control with regard to the overall alignment of the athletics department within the university.

Of course, it certainly is true that the NCAA should not be involved in formulating specific acts for FARs to follow. Its support of FARA effectively removes that duty from the NCAA and places it at the institution and conference level. Nonetheless, requiring institutions to have the FAR involved in a meaningful way seems to be a required step for the FAR to achieve what the NCAA wishes.

Concurrently, it must be recognized that there is substantial space between legislating to institutions and leaving institutions unfettered. Said another way, there is a difference between not biting and being toothless. Ultimately, the NCAA must reconcile its twin desires to have strong FAR involvement in an autonomous campus operation.

We encourage further discussion of this issue and believe such discussion is necessary. FARs play a significant role in many institutions, including at Northwood University and Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. With leadership from the NCAA, they could play such a role in all of them.