When the NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics issued its highly anticipated report in October that calls for course-changing presidential leadership over college sports’ increasingly complicated fiscal landscape, reaction was as broad as the group’s title is long.

Many athletics stakeholders praised the attention to the ominous fiscal trends that threaten the integration of big-time athletics into the university mission, while a few critics claimed the report is too rhetorical to have the desired impact. But regardless of what proponents or detractors felt about the report itself, few on either side asked the critical question: What happens now?

With more than two dozen recommendations on the table from the 50 chancellors and presidents on the Task Force roster who signed on to shape the Association’s second century, the future would appear ripe for movement. But two hurdles exist.

One is the Task Force’s self-proclaimed notion that there is no immediate fiscal crisis in intercollegiate athletics. For an Association accustomed to acting only when the flames are at their apex, asking for a culture change during a slow burn may prompt more fizzle than sizzle.

Second is the stakeholders growing accustomed to a national correction template, which the Task Force adamantly proclaimed was the wrong approach for this edition of reform. While national-scale legislation worked well for the recently implemented Division I academic-reform structure that strengthened eligibility standards and produced the effective carrot-and-stick Academic Progress Rate, the Task Force emphasized that tending to fiscal responsibility and integration issues are accomplished best locally.

With nothing ablaze and no mandates to follow, what happens now?

While presidents have been identified as the change agents, stakeholders say the ball in fact is in their court.

University of Oregon professor Nathan Tublitz is one of those stakeholders. "The Task Force report is an important document," he said, "but the real focus must be on what to do now. The worst thing would be if all of this work by the presidents goes for naught. We can’t let that happen."

The we to which Tublitz refers includes a group he leads. Tublitz co-chairs the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a reform-minded, faculty-senate-based collection of educators with a particular interest in the Task Force’s integration emphasis. The COIA emerged several years ago as a group that understands athletics’ value as a component of higher education, but also one that demands attention to academic integrity.

The Task Force report mentioned COIA and the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association specifically as key constituents to help the chancellors and presidents effect change. Both faculty groups felt so strongly about the report that they issued statements on the day it was released. Tublitz and fellow COIA co-chair Virginia Shepherd of Vanderbilt University said their group stood willing "to work closely with individual campus presidents, athletics directors, other faculty leaders and the NCAA to implement proposals in the report and formulate further steps to resolve the longstanding problems that have undermined the values of intercollegiate sports."

Meanwhile, FARA released a joint statement with the Division 1A Faculty Athletics Representatives commending the Task Force for "recommending the inclusion of faculty members, particularly FARs, as an essential checkpoint in athletics policy and oversight of student-athlete academic success."

1A FAR President Percy Bates said he and his FAR colleagues have to keep the discussion going.

"The longer this report sits out there without any resultant action, the more people either become cynical about it or take potshots without really grappling with what’s actually stated," said the University of Michgan FAR. "The report essentially challenges big-time athletics programs to change, and it may very well be that the 1A FARs are the people best suited to at least coordinate the discussion."

The three faculty groups weren’t the only ones jumping on the presidents’ reform bandwagon. Two organizations — the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, and the National Association of College and University Business Officers — issued resolutions the day the Task Force report was announced.

Richard D. Legon, president of the AGB, said it made sense for his organization to pledge support given that the Task Force devoted one of its four subcommittees to his constituency.

"The AGB was enthusiastic about signing a formal statement pledging cooperation with the NCAA because the role of boards often plays out behind the scenes and is therefore poorly understood," Legon said. "Boards work with presidents, through presidents, and in support of presidents, but they ultimately have the long-term fiduciary responsibility for institutional mission and final say in strategic policy-making. Boards must rise to the occasion when tough decisions arise, which is partly why an entire chapter of the report is devoted to the role of boards."

The AGB’s resolution pledges collaboration on implementing Task Force recommendations that pertain to trustees, which include increased education for trustees during orientation programs and adjustments where necessary in the NCAA’s athletics certification program to enhance board accountability.

But no commitment was more important than the one from NACUBO, given the Task Force statement that fiscal responsibility — and the clear, concise and comparable data necessary to drive it — was the underpinning of reform’s next phase. Since the growth rate of athletics spending has outpaced that of higher education overall in recent years, the Task Force said that the collegiate model eventually will be undermined if Division I athletics programs don’t get their financial houses in order.

NACUBO has worked with the NCAA for more than a year to collect more concise financial data on athletics operating budgets by redefining the reporting terminology. Financial reporting in the past was clouded by institutions interpreting differently how to report costs. Almost half of Division I schools, for example, included "indirect costs" such as charges for athletics human resources, payroll, and facility services like physical plant and security as allocated from the university budget. The other half of schools, though, reported those as direct athletics expenditures.

Under the new reporting parameters, all costs previously identified as indirect are included toward the athletics operating budget. The new reporting scheme also requires institutions to identify all compensation that is contractually guaranteed.

NACUBO also helped establish the "dashboard indicators" that give presidents a better indication of where their own athletics departments stand in the aggregate. Among them are:

Athletics expenditures as a percent of institutional expenditures.

Total athletics revenues and percent change from the previous year.

Allocated revenues as a percent of total athletics revenues.

Allocated revenue increase as a percent of university revenue increase.

Athletics debt service as a percent of total athletics expenditures.

Athletics expenditures for salary and benefits, participation and game expenses, facilities and administrative support, debt service and other as a percent of total expenditures.

The indicators accompany three years of financial data that will be made available this spring. If they indicate vast differences when comparing an institution to fellow conference members or a group of like-mission schools, university officials should discuss why. In other words, the indicators are there to raise questions more than to provide answers.

Just as helping define the financial landscape was one of NACUBO’s roles, the organization’s president and CEO, John Walda, said another is helping athletics and university personnel apply the results.

"We’ll help develop and establish a training program for athletics administrators that prepares business officers in athletics departments for the accountability practices called for in the report," said Walda, who coincidentally served on the Task Force as a trustee from Indiana University, Bloomington, before he took the job at NACUBO. "The program could also help strengthen financial-management skills for athletics personnel. In the end, any programming we develop could enhance the overall financial-management picture for athletics."

With so many stakeholders stating their commitment to collaborate, the Task Force report seems destined to be more than a dust collector. In addition to COIA, FARA, NACUBO and AGB chiming in, the Task Force also garnered backing from the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities and the Division 1A Athletics Directors’ Association.

But words can speak louder than action if stakeholders don’t seize the momentum.

Walda believes there’s enough collective resolve to keep moving forward. As with any major reform, he said, the first step is to admit there’s a problem.

"The impact of the Task Force so far has been to draw attention to the fact that there are significant and foreboding issues for the future of intercollegiate athletics," he said. "The strategy for causing change may be more debatable, but step one is raising awareness of issues."

For example, Walda said, fiscal responsibility has been discussed, but not in precise terms until the report was issued. The growth in revenue and expenses in athletics versus growth in higher education at large also is a trend that not many people have focused on but one that is very important. Similarly, the growth of support for athletics departments from allocated funds is one that needed the focus it now has.

"There hasn’t been time to implement strategies, which is what we’re doing now," Walda said, "but I do take pleasure in seeing a wide range of acceptance of the conclusions the report reaches."

FARA President Lorrie Clemo said her organization is already on the move. With FARs having been identified as integral to the reform movement, she said it’s time for FARA to increase visibility and position representatives more broadly.

"We want to change the nature of our professional development," said the FAR at State University of New York at Oswego. "Most of it in the last decade has been on how to serve as an individual who oversees academic-integrity issues within athletics and the well-being of student-athletes. We are going to shift focus so that FARs view their role more broadly, so that they do see themselves connected to the faculty, to the administration, to boards and other constituent groups that have an interest in athletics that we may have under-emphasized in the past."

Tublitz said COIA has been active as well, having sent the report to faculty senates for continued dialogue on every campus.

"One of the key aspects of the report is to have matters discussed at the local level so people can think about what issues are germane to the institutions and what aren’t," he said. "What are individual campuses doing poorly and what are they doing well? Only by that kind of work will institutions begin to think about ways of re-integrating athletics into academics."

Tublitz cited "a cautious optimism" that the trajectory of intercollegiate athletics can be altered so that it is more consistent with an academic mission. "However," he said, "that trajectory will not be changed by COIA alone, or the NCAA alone or the presidents alone. It has to be a combination of all the stakeholder groups getting together and coming up with solutions, some of which will have to be nationally mandated and some of which will have to be implemented at a local level."

That’s what happens next.