State of the Association

Jim Livengood, athletics director

University of Arizona

USA Today

“(The NCAA is) being more aggressive, candidly, at a time when I think we need to be. We’ve got to start taking some stands on some things. Some of them are going to be very sensitive, and some are going to bring potential consequences that maybe we’re not all going to like. But I like the idea of trying to make a difference.”

Women’s basketball issues

Dick Baddour, athletics director

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Greensboro News & Record

Discussing comparisons between women’s basketball budgets and their often profitable men’s counterparts:

“The men have been playing for decades and the women for a much shorter time. And a lot of that time the women haven’t been ignored, but they haven’t been treated equally, either. Now that they are getting better funding, it just isn’t fair or realistic to expect women to (make money) so quickly.”

Judy Southard, associate athletics director

Louisiana State University

Greensboro News & Record

“Most schools are just now starting to figure out how to market women's basketball. They’re putting an enormous amount of money into marketing knowing that, while it’s not going to pay off this year or even next, they are building a foundation for the future.”

Hiring trends

Floyd Keith, executive director

Black Coaches Association

Wichita Eagle

Discussing the trend for current coaches to groom their sons as their successors:

 “My bottom line is I don’t have an issue with capable people being hired anywhere, regardless of color and last name. But if you do in-house hirings in Division I-A football and, say, three out of 119 jobs stay in the family, that doesn’t give too many opportunities for anybody to break through.”

Academic standards

Dennis Thomas, commissioner

Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference

New York Times

Discussing the academic challenges that historically black colleges and universities face because of their lack of funding:

“All of a sudden, everyone is talking about why the historically black college and universities are not graduating kids at the same level as other white universities. Come on. I don’t think the media is going to tell the real story. We’ve been graduating African-American student-athletes for centuries. And we were graduating them when no one else wanted to graduate them. ...

  “We do more with less than other institutions do with more.”