National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Convention sets leadership agenda
Annual gathering takes a look inward at future challenges
Annual gathering takes a look inward at future challenges
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By Jack Copeland
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
The 2007 Convention exhorted attendees through its theme to “provide leadership in changing times” — then established a lengthy list during its business sessions and issues programming of areas where that leadership will be needed.
From NCAA President Myles Brand’s call in his State of the Association address for fairness through sportsmanship and in hiring and sports participation opportunities to discussions of challenges posed by technology and culture, the 101st Convention effectively set an agenda for the beginning of the NCAA’s second century.
While the Convention produced important policy decisions in all three divisions — re-establishing limits on graduate-student transfers in Division I, enabling links between campuses and communities in Division II, and equipping Division III to address rapid membership growth (see the January 15 issue of The NCAA News) — this year’s event may be remembered most for defining issues confronting the modern NCAA.
Plenty were present to hear the call to leadership in Orlando, where the official attendance of 2,697 included 2,199 delegates representing institutions in the three divisions. Divisions II and III drew almost exactly the same number of institutional representatives — 837 and 836, respectively — while votes to override legislation easing graduate-student transfers and to turn back the proposal to add a 12th regular-season game in the Football Championship Subdivision helped attract 526 delegates in Division I.
The attendance figure is the second highest since 1997, trailing only last year’s Centennial Convention attendance of 2,758.
Other speakers joined Brand in sounding a challenge to continue improving intercollegiate athletics, including longtime University of Iowa athletics administrator Christine Grant, recipient of this year’s NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award, who urged working aggressively through the NCAA governance structure to effect change.
“We need our most creative minds working on issues such as the escalating costs of athletics programs, the development of diverse and inclusive athletics departments, the creation of gender-equitable programs and the development of practical ideas on how we can retain our men’s Olympic sports,” she said during the Convention’s opening business session January 6. “We owe that to our student-athletes, to our institutions and to our organization.”
Topical discussions
Grant’s list of issues is only part of the array of challenges laid before delegates’ feet in Orlando, where 19 Association-wide “menu” presentations also touched on administrative, technical and social conditions in intercollegiate athletics.
Some of those sessions — notably a presentation on the Association’s SCORE and GOALS studies — actually provided data and tools for taking those issues on.
Data from the new NCAA studies — which were shared not only during an Association-wide session January 6 but also in meetings with all three divisions’ presidential governance groups and Student-Athlete Advisory Committees — show among other things that student-athletes are at least as academically engaged as their non-athlete counterparts and that former student-athletes are highly positive about most aspects of their college experience.
Full reports from the studies are expected to be published in early fall of this year.
Ways of employing new media, planning for crises and managing risks, and establishing best practices for achieving gender equity and ethnic diversity were suggested in other sessions that emphasized the range of available tools — many provided by the NCAA national office — that are proving useful in those efforts.
Some sessions suggested hot-button topics that will be at the heart of some of the Association’s most confounding issues during coming years — including rapidly changing technologies (text-messaging, for example) and their potentially harmful impact in recruiting, and the difficulties of integrating athletics into institutions’ academic missions.
The term “integration” may have achieved status as a buzzword at this year’s Convention, where it was the focus not only of an Association-wide discussion but also of presentations during Divisions II and III forums.
Bob Malekoff, senior advisor for the College Sports Project, suggested during the Association-wide session that integration requires an understanding that blanket approaches will not work, that the academic side must contribute to the resolution, that measurements must be developed to measure success and that coaches should be given a more balanced “scorecard” that rewards them based on factors other than the won-lost record. Another speaker, Nathan Tublitz of the University of Oregon, said recent recommendations by the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics that would aid integration “must be turned into bylaws” to give that document value (see the guest editorial).
Finally, some of the menu sessions staked out new ground at the Convention by seeking to improve athletics administrators’ understanding of cultural factors influencing today’s student-athletes.
A pair of sessions pointed to what sociologist Harry Edwards called a confluence of violence, drug abuse and disregard for education — exemplified in gang culture — as challenges for “the most critical time in the history of college sports, at least since World War II.” Panelists in those sessions said the solution for college athletics likely includes increased educational demands on young people, a willingness to provide well-reasoned second chances and a commitment to more professional opportunities for people of color.
All of the Association-wide sessions now can be viewed at the NCAA Web site, by following the “media and events” pull-down menu to “events,” then selecting the link under the heading “Association business” to the Web page devoted to the 2007 Convention.
Looking ahead
One other noteworthy aspect of this year’s Convention — which with its January 5 opening had its earliest start since 1955 — likely will be forgotten beginning next year, when the event’s dates shift nearer to the middle of January and stay there for the foreseeable future.
The 2008 Convention also will mark a return to a familiar venue, the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, where the Association’s 102nd gathering is scheduled January 11-14.
The 2009 Convention will usher in a couple of significant new features: a fresh location in Washington, D.C. (the newly constructed Gaylord National Hotel), and a shift to a Wednesday-Saturday rather than Friday-Monday format. That year’s Convention will be January 14-17 — just a few days before that year’s presidential inauguration ceremonies in the nation’s capitol.
The scheduling shift serves several purposes, primarily ensuring that the Convention will be staged at attractive properties through 2019 while eliminating conflicts with the Bowl Championship Series and generally conforming to the start of many institutions’ second semesters.
The change, which also moves the Convention further away from the holidays, is an attempt to respond to feedback from delegates who preferred a work-week schedule instead of the current weekend dates.
From NCAA President Myles Brand’s call in his State of the Association address for fairness through sportsmanship and in hiring and sports participation opportunities to discussions of challenges posed by technology and culture, the 101st Convention effectively set an agenda for the beginning of the NCAA’s second century.
While the Convention produced important policy decisions in all three divisions — re-establishing limits on graduate-student transfers in Division I, enabling links between campuses and communities in Division II, and equipping Division III to address rapid membership growth (see the January 15 issue of The NCAA News) — this year’s event may be remembered most for defining issues confronting the modern NCAA.
Plenty were present to hear the call to leadership in Orlando, where the official attendance of 2,697 included 2,199 delegates representing institutions in the three divisions. Divisions II and III drew almost exactly the same number of institutional representatives — 837 and 836, respectively — while votes to override legislation easing graduate-student transfers and to turn back the proposal to add a 12th regular-season game in the Football Championship Subdivision helped attract 526 delegates in Division I.
The attendance figure is the second highest since 1997, trailing only last year’s Centennial Convention attendance of 2,758.
Other speakers joined Brand in sounding a challenge to continue improving intercollegiate athletics, including longtime University of Iowa athletics administrator Christine Grant, recipient of this year’s NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award, who urged working aggressively through the NCAA governance structure to effect change.
“We need our most creative minds working on issues such as the escalating costs of athletics programs, the development of diverse and inclusive athletics departments, the creation of gender-equitable programs and the development of practical ideas on how we can retain our men’s Olympic sports,” she said during the Convention’s opening business session January 6. “We owe that to our student-athletes, to our institutions and to our organization.”
Topical discussions
Grant’s list of issues is only part of the array of challenges laid before delegates’ feet in Orlando, where 19 Association-wide “menu” presentations also touched on administrative, technical and social conditions in intercollegiate athletics.
Some of those sessions — notably a presentation on the Association’s SCORE and GOALS studies — actually provided data and tools for taking those issues on.
Data from the new NCAA studies — which were shared not only during an Association-wide session January 6 but also in meetings with all three divisions’ presidential governance groups and Student-Athlete Advisory Committees — show among other things that student-athletes are at least as academically engaged as their non-athlete counterparts and that former student-athletes are highly positive about most aspects of their college experience.
Full reports from the studies are expected to be published in early fall of this year.
Ways of employing new media, planning for crises and managing risks, and establishing best practices for achieving gender equity and ethnic diversity were suggested in other sessions that emphasized the range of available tools — many provided by the NCAA national office — that are proving useful in those efforts.
Some sessions suggested hot-button topics that will be at the heart of some of the Association’s most confounding issues during coming years — including rapidly changing technologies (text-messaging, for example) and their potentially harmful impact in recruiting, and the difficulties of integrating athletics into institutions’ academic missions.
The term “integration” may have achieved status as a buzzword at this year’s Convention, where it was the focus not only of an Association-wide discussion but also of presentations during Divisions II and III forums.
Bob Malekoff, senior advisor for the College Sports Project, suggested during the Association-wide session that integration requires an understanding that blanket approaches will not work, that the academic side must contribute to the resolution, that measurements must be developed to measure success and that coaches should be given a more balanced “scorecard” that rewards them based on factors other than the won-lost record. Another speaker, Nathan Tublitz of the University of Oregon, said recent recommendations by the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics that would aid integration “must be turned into bylaws” to give that document value (see the guest editorial).
Finally, some of the menu sessions staked out new ground at the Convention by seeking to improve athletics administrators’ understanding of cultural factors influencing today’s student-athletes.
A pair of sessions pointed to what sociologist Harry Edwards called a confluence of violence, drug abuse and disregard for education — exemplified in gang culture — as challenges for “the most critical time in the history of college sports, at least since World War II.” Panelists in those sessions said the solution for college athletics likely includes increased educational demands on young people, a willingness to provide well-reasoned second chances and a commitment to more professional opportunities for people of color.
All of the Association-wide sessions now can be viewed at the NCAA Web site, by following the “media and events” pull-down menu to “events,” then selecting the link under the heading “Association business” to the Web page devoted to the 2007 Convention.
Looking ahead
One other noteworthy aspect of this year’s Convention — which with its January 5 opening had its earliest start since 1955 — likely will be forgotten beginning next year, when the event’s dates shift nearer to the middle of January and stay there for the foreseeable future.
The 2008 Convention also will mark a return to a familiar venue, the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, where the Association’s 102nd gathering is scheduled January 11-14.
The 2009 Convention will usher in a couple of significant new features: a fresh location in Washington, D.C. (the newly constructed Gaylord National Hotel), and a shift to a Wednesday-Saturday rather than Friday-Monday format. That year’s Convention will be January 14-17 — just a few days before that year’s presidential inauguration ceremonies in the nation’s capitol.
The scheduling shift serves several purposes, primarily ensuring that the Convention will be staged at attractive properties through 2019 while eliminating conflicts with the Bowl Championship Series and generally conforming to the start of many institutions’ second semesters.
The change, which also moves the Convention further away from the holidays, is an attempt to respond to feedback from delegates who preferred a work-week schedule instead of the current weekend dates.
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