National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2006
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The Association has reached the point at which it must walk and chew gum at the same time.
Our mission is to ensure that intercollegiate athletics participation is an integral part of the higher-education experience. Institutions have remained true to that century-old mantra by adopting stringent academic-reform initiatives in recent years. Division I’s Academic Progress Rate, the Graduation Success Rate, and the contemporaneous and historical-based penalty structure are not just concepts anymore — they are being implemented and they are making a genuine difference.
So if the Association walks the talk with mission, why does it need to chew gum?
Later this fall, the NCAA Presidential Task Force will release its final report after spending 18 months deliberating the next challenge facing the collegiate model: persuading institutions to moderate athletics spending while at the same time aggressively seeking new revenue streams.
That is a sticky proposition indeed.
The reason for assembling the Task Force was to address what presidents collectively identified as financial stress in Division I intercollegiate athletics. Budgets have been increasing at two or three times the rate of higher education in general, and though the athletics operation still represents but a small fraction of a university’s total spending, that rate of increase cannot be sustained, particularly when the usual sources for revenues (ticket sales and television rights fees) may have peaked.
The Task Force’s call for moderation will not apply evenly to every institution — a handful of the larger schools will continue to generate revenues over and above expenses, for example. But the problem comes when those who realistically cannot achieve that level of financial solvency nonetheless try to emulate the approach.
Thus comes the clear statement from the Task Force that we need moderation — not cutbacks, but moderate growth.
That message seems pragmatic enough, but one piece might be perceived as anomalous. While we profess the integration of athletics within the educational mission and the moderation of athletics spending locally, the Association nonetheless must conduct the business of college sports well. That means the Association must pursue additional revenue options, as long as it is done within the mission and values of higher education.
Using "business" and "college sports" in the same sentence is not the same as labeling college sports
as a business. It is not. College sports exhibits business aspects only when it comes to revenues — the enterprise is nonprofit on the expenditure side.The latter is where the tension occurs, however. Without moderation in spending, universities will have to rely more on subsidies to balance their athletics budgets. Most do so currently — many at an increasing rate. The NCAA has a responsibility to help ease that burden.
The walk-and-chew-gum equation is further necessitated by the fact that we are at the front end of a media revolution. The old model of people watching television from 8 to 10 each night does not exist anymore. People are viewing and listening to games in ways that were unheard of just a few years ago. Media and
technology are changing so rapidly in fact that it is difficult to predict where the road will lead. I do know, however, that if the NCAA is not attuned to this phenomenon, it will not be serving its members well. The Association has a responsibility to its institutions to provide support.
The NCAA must conduct the business of college sports well.
As we press on with academic reform and call for institutions to moderate spending, some people may see the Association’s pursuit of the business side of college sports as not well-intentioned or perhaps even contradictory. It is neither.
Universities, also under a growing financial strain, walk and chew gum simultaneously. Universities are educational institutions, but if they do not conduct their business well — if they do not raise money from the sale of services (for example, residence halls) or they do not acquire funds from state allocations or philanthropic gifts — they will be unable to provide the quality and quantity of education they want. Universities engage in this business behavior all the time, but somehow when those practices transfer to athletics, people perceive them to be anomalous and contradictory. Yet those very people understand and accept the same model in universities.
Yes, intercollegiate athletics must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. It must honor its mission and still keep up with an ever-changing media and technology landscape. While the latter will demand a nimble Association, we will be inflexible in our devotion to principles and in our commitment to higher education. Intercollegiate athletics looks different now than it did in 1906 or 1956, but the enterprise continues to be built on the fundamental bricks and mortar of the collegiate model: The players are students first who enhance their educational experience through their participation in intercollegiate athletics.
The NCAA is obligated to protect — and enhance — those opportunities by conducting the business of college sports well.
Myles Brand is president of the NCAA.
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