The NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics released its much-anticipated report on athletics reform October 30. The central message of the report is that current financial trends in the operation of intercollegiate athletics (at any level) are not sustainable and without presidential intervention will lead to a national crisis. The report reaffirms the philosophy that intercollegiate athletics is (and must remain) "amateur" athletics and that the fundamental justification for intercollegiate athletics is as a "learning experience" for the student participant.

More broadly, intercollegiate athletics should be viewed similarly to other specialized performance-based learning experiences. The Task Force discussions were informed by comparisons of intercollegiate athletics to a variety of performance-based activities such as music, dance and theater. Obvious similarities were noted in terms of individual and team performance, personal development and (of course) "coaching."

The discussions also noted the role of audiences and the importance of special venues for athletics and other performance-based activities. There also was discussion about how universities purposefully create many types of special, outside-the-classroom "learning environments," including residence halls, student government organizations, special-interest clubs, small-group projects, service learning and mentoring opportunities.

In short, the Task Force viewed intercollegiate athletics as a special learning environment but with characteristics common to many types of purposeful collegiate learning activities.

The Task Force concluded that when viewing intercollegiate athletics as a planned learning experience, we should expect a significant oversight role by faculty. However, neither faculty nor athletics administrators appear well prepared for that type of oversight. It is this part of the call to action that will require some of our best thinking.

Involving faculty through a faculty senate oversight committee or through the budget-review process is common, but in most cases the focus is not on intercollegiate athletics as a designed

learning experience. Rather, it is re-garded as an "auxiliary" activity that competes (some would argue too successfully) for resources and wields considerable political influence through alumni associations, governing boards, donors, and the immense local and national press coverage given to collegiate sports. The closest most faculty come to involvement in intercollegiate athletics from a learning perspective is in reviewing requests for exceptions to standards related to admission, retention or social behavior.

Achieving genuine faculty oversight on most campuses will require, as a first step, implementing a comprehensive educational program to sensitize both faculty and athletics administrators to the values, viewpoints and operating procedures unique to each.

For example, faculty will not routinely understand how to evaluate an educational experience where the most common metric of success is "winning." Faculty will not have an appreciation of the public nature of the performance of student-athletes, for the necessity of preparing students for the pressures resulting from intense public reaction to that performance, or for the routine of imposing special limits on student-athletes in terms of behavior away from the performance venues.

Faculty also will not automatically understand that critics are seldom subject-matter experts. There will be little understanding of the importance of motivation and repetition in achieving peak performance. There will be almost no understanding of the trade-offs between tenure and compensation for coaches or the absence of anything resembling a seven-year probationary period culminating in peer review.

On the other side, ADs, long accustomed to directing a university auxiliary, have a history of focusing considerable attention on enhancing the "product" as a strategy for attracting larger crowds, generating more revenue and balancing budgets. In such an environment, public opinion is important. The call of the Task Force to involve faculty in the oversight of a structured learning experience (intercollegiate athletics) will shift some of that focus to Academic Progress Rates, Graduation Success Rates, admission standards, the effectiveness of academic support programs, and the relative success of those students admitted because of "special talent." But will this be sufficient? Will faculty want to see documentation of what students are learning as a direct result of participating in intercollegiate athletics? Will ADs be expected to document student learning in such areas as leadership, teamwork, personal goal setting, time management and motivation?

Right now, at least at Division I institutions, we have allowed two cultures — academics and intercollegiate athletics — to exist simultaneously, and we have focused on their differences and treated them differently. The Task Force is calling on us to focus on the similarities and to do this by framing intercollegiate athletics as a structured learning experience subject to faculty oversight.

This is a challenge worthy of our best efforts. Perhaps a starting point is rethinking how we finance intercollegiate athletics. If intercollegiate athletics is a structured learning experience, then perhaps we should not fund it as an auxiliary.