National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2007
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In defense of bureaucracy and its improvement
As a rule, bureaucracies get a bad name.
The dictionary isn’t kind toward the word. Webster’s New World calls it “the administration of government through departments and subdivisions managed by sets of appointed officials following an inflexible routine.”
That’s cold.
Mary McCarthy, the 20th century critic and writer, said that “bureaucracy, the rule of no one, is the modern form of despotism.”
And yet, it is how we get things done. Having spent more than 40 years on campus, I am well aware of how complex and bureaucratic governance structures are within higher education. But even compared to campus bureaucracies, not known for their simplicity, the NCAA governance structure is extraordinarily complex.
Here’s the sketchy version for Division I.
The division operates as a representative democracy (as opposed to Divisions II and III, which retains the one-school, one-vote approach). The Board of Directors, representing the conferences and their members, consists of university presidents; it is the final authority on all rules and policies specific to the division. The Board is advised by, and receives recommendations from, the Management Council, which also is representative of the membership; it is populated by athletics administrators, conference officials and faculty representatives.
The Council, in turn, is advised by, and receives recommendations from, two cabinets, once again representative of the membership, which deal with championships and academic/eligibility/compliance matters. A multitude of additional committees provide advice and recommendations to these higher-level bodies.
Now that’s complex. But it is how we get things done. Unlike Mark Antony, I have come to praise Caesar; not to bury him. I’m here to defend our bureaucracy. It meets the need for competitive equity and fairness among member universities and colleges that differ considerably from each other and their understandable desire to be represented.
The current committee structure was designed with forethought and it has served the division well. But 10 years is old for this type of governance structure. The challenges change, and the beliefs and attitudes of those who are served by the structure change. While retaining the key elements of the structure, it is now productive to undertake renewal and revision.
After almost two years of healthy debate, a proposal has emerged from the Management Council’s governance subcommittee to revise the upper-level committee structure. Without citing the details, the Council will be divided into two, with one Council focused on policy issues and strategies and the other on legislative matters. These Councils would receive advice and recommendations from six cabinets, one for championships and the others devoted to specific areas, namely administration, academics, amateurism, recruiting and student-athlete benefits. The total number of persons engaged by these committees would be greater than those engaged by the current structure, though the individual councils and cabinets will be reduced in size from the current committees. All these changes are designed to facilitate good debate.
This revised structure will need to be approved by the Board. The plan is for the Board to review the proposal in August, and possibly to vote on it in October. To be acceptable, the revised structure should best meet the need to provide advice and recommendations to the Board in an objective and fair manner. The revised governance committees include membership requirements that should yield representation in terms of gender and race, conference and subdivision, and position (particularly faculty representatives).
There may be some tinkering yet to do, but in my view, the recommendation improves on a system that has worked for a decade. Yes, it is process driven, but that is how we get things done.
Still, it doesn’t always work in every situation.
The NCAA governance structure, like the governance structures of universities, consists primarily of horizontal committees. That is, these committees tend to consist of members who have roughly similar responsibilities. So, in universities, faculty tend to meet together, department heads tend to meet together, deans tend to meet together, and so on. Similarly, in Division I and for the Association as a whole, there are group meetings for faculty representatives, for athletics directors, for commissioners, and so on.
The NCAA does a better job than universities of vertically integrating its committees, in that persons with varying responsibilities serve together, but vertical integration is nonetheless limited. For example, the Management Council includes persons from conference offices, athletics directors and other athletics administrators and faculty representatives. But — for understandable reasons — it does not include the full array of those with responsibilities in intercollegiate athletics, such as coaches and presidents.
The Management Council, like other NCAA governance committees, also is limited vertically by not including those outside the membership, but with interest in intercollegiate athletics, such as those from professional sports, the corporate community or the media.
The Board of Directors is best served when it receives advice and recommendations from its horizontally organized governance committees and, on occasion and depending on the issues, from vertically organized task forces. The final decisions, of course, fall to the Board. But the additional advice from a vertically organized task force can assist the Board. The value and relevance of that advice is to be decided by the Board, in the context of the advice and recommendations it receives from the governance committees.
Vertically organized task forces enable persons with different perspectives on the same issues to sit at a common table for open discussions. Bringing together diverse perspectives can produce new thinking and new approaches.
Let me give a specific, and challenging, example. One of the most pressing problems in men’s basketball is the chaotic and at times unsavory environment in pre-collegiate, youth basketball. College coaches must recruit in this environment and (privately at least) express unhappiness with it. Over the years, the NCAA has passed a number of pieces of legislation to address this problem, but without success.
The best opportunity to meet this challenge is to bring together representatives of the primary constituents involved. These include coaches, presidents, athletics directors, commissioners, but also the NBA, corporate and media partners, and those who work with pre-collegiate youth, such as USA Basketball, the National High School Federation, the shoe companies and the AAU. In several configurations, this type of group has been meeting for two years. New approaches to dealing with youth basketball are emerging, and within this year, there should be noticeable forward movement on this very difficult issue.
The point is that the NCAA governance structure, as currently constituted, and as proposed to be revised, does not have a place for such vertically integrated committees, with each constituent having a voice at the table. I do not believe that the governance structure should be radically changed to include such committees; that could well harm the ability of the Association to conduct its normal business. Rather, as needed, there must be a way to bring the right parties to the table, and to use the results of their discussions to inform the Board in its decision-making.
Not everyone likes the use of task forces; that is true in the NCAA and in universities. They prefer the governance structures in place, in good part because of the predictability of the process and often the outcomes. And there are two dangers with ad hoc committees and task forces that must be guarded against. First, they cannot substitute for the bureaucracy; they advise it. And second, they cannot hang around like haunting ghosts long past their relevance. Their days should be numbered from the beginning.
But at times vertical, short-term, highly focused task forces can achieve results in a timely manner that standing governance committees cannot achieve. Flexibility in problem-solving is a virtue. Moreover, engaging other groups and persons without voice in a highly horizontal committee structure, develops wide-ranging support for solutions. In the end, the ultimate safeguard is that authority must reside with the Board.
The proposed revised governance structure in Division I and the occasional use of task forces increases the complexity of governance. But this increased complexity is offset by better advice and recommendations to the Board from diverse constituents and by improved wide-ranging support for the NCAA’s decisions. For a highly complex association, such as the NCAA, complex decision-making processes are a necessity.
In the end, we may succeed in giving our bureaucracies a good name.
Myles Brand is president of the NCAA.
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By Myles Brand
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
As a rule, bureaucracies get a bad name.The dictionary isn’t kind toward the word. Webster’s New World calls it “the administration of government through departments and subdivisions managed by sets of appointed officials following an inflexible routine.”
That’s cold.
Mary McCarthy, the 20th century critic and writer, said that “bureaucracy, the rule of no one, is the modern form of despotism.”
And yet, it is how we get things done. Having spent more than 40 years on campus, I am well aware of how complex and bureaucratic governance structures are within higher education. But even compared to campus bureaucracies, not known for their simplicity, the NCAA governance structure is extraordinarily complex.
Here’s the sketchy version for Division I.
The division operates as a representative democracy (as opposed to Divisions II and III, which retains the one-school, one-vote approach). The Board of Directors, representing the conferences and their members, consists of university presidents; it is the final authority on all rules and policies specific to the division. The Board is advised by, and receives recommendations from, the Management Council, which also is representative of the membership; it is populated by athletics administrators, conference officials and faculty representatives.
The Council, in turn, is advised by, and receives recommendations from, two cabinets, once again representative of the membership, which deal with championships and academic/eligibility/compliance matters. A multitude of additional committees provide advice and recommendations to these higher-level bodies.
Now that’s complex. But it is how we get things done. Unlike Mark Antony, I have come to praise Caesar; not to bury him. I’m here to defend our bureaucracy. It meets the need for competitive equity and fairness among member universities and colleges that differ considerably from each other and their understandable desire to be represented.
The current committee structure was designed with forethought and it has served the division well. But 10 years is old for this type of governance structure. The challenges change, and the beliefs and attitudes of those who are served by the structure change. While retaining the key elements of the structure, it is now productive to undertake renewal and revision.
After almost two years of healthy debate, a proposal has emerged from the Management Council’s governance subcommittee to revise the upper-level committee structure. Without citing the details, the Council will be divided into two, with one Council focused on policy issues and strategies and the other on legislative matters. These Councils would receive advice and recommendations from six cabinets, one for championships and the others devoted to specific areas, namely administration, academics, amateurism, recruiting and student-athlete benefits. The total number of persons engaged by these committees would be greater than those engaged by the current structure, though the individual councils and cabinets will be reduced in size from the current committees. All these changes are designed to facilitate good debate.
This revised structure will need to be approved by the Board. The plan is for the Board to review the proposal in August, and possibly to vote on it in October. To be acceptable, the revised structure should best meet the need to provide advice and recommendations to the Board in an objective and fair manner. The revised governance committees include membership requirements that should yield representation in terms of gender and race, conference and subdivision, and position (particularly faculty representatives).
There may be some tinkering yet to do, but in my view, the recommendation improves on a system that has worked for a decade. Yes, it is process driven, but that is how we get things done.
Still, it doesn’t always work in every situation.
The NCAA governance structure, like the governance structures of universities, consists primarily of horizontal committees. That is, these committees tend to consist of members who have roughly similar responsibilities. So, in universities, faculty tend to meet together, department heads tend to meet together, deans tend to meet together, and so on. Similarly, in Division I and for the Association as a whole, there are group meetings for faculty representatives, for athletics directors, for commissioners, and so on.
The NCAA does a better job than universities of vertically integrating its committees, in that persons with varying responsibilities serve together, but vertical integration is nonetheless limited. For example, the Management Council includes persons from conference offices, athletics directors and other athletics administrators and faculty representatives. But — for understandable reasons — it does not include the full array of those with responsibilities in intercollegiate athletics, such as coaches and presidents.
The Management Council, like other NCAA governance committees, also is limited vertically by not including those outside the membership, but with interest in intercollegiate athletics, such as those from professional sports, the corporate community or the media.
The Board of Directors is best served when it receives advice and recommendations from its horizontally organized governance committees and, on occasion and depending on the issues, from vertically organized task forces. The final decisions, of course, fall to the Board. But the additional advice from a vertically organized task force can assist the Board. The value and relevance of that advice is to be decided by the Board, in the context of the advice and recommendations it receives from the governance committees.
Vertically organized task forces enable persons with different perspectives on the same issues to sit at a common table for open discussions. Bringing together diverse perspectives can produce new thinking and new approaches.
Let me give a specific, and challenging, example. One of the most pressing problems in men’s basketball is the chaotic and at times unsavory environment in pre-collegiate, youth basketball. College coaches must recruit in this environment and (privately at least) express unhappiness with it. Over the years, the NCAA has passed a number of pieces of legislation to address this problem, but without success.
The best opportunity to meet this challenge is to bring together representatives of the primary constituents involved. These include coaches, presidents, athletics directors, commissioners, but also the NBA, corporate and media partners, and those who work with pre-collegiate youth, such as USA Basketball, the National High School Federation, the shoe companies and the AAU. In several configurations, this type of group has been meeting for two years. New approaches to dealing with youth basketball are emerging, and within this year, there should be noticeable forward movement on this very difficult issue.
The point is that the NCAA governance structure, as currently constituted, and as proposed to be revised, does not have a place for such vertically integrated committees, with each constituent having a voice at the table. I do not believe that the governance structure should be radically changed to include such committees; that could well harm the ability of the Association to conduct its normal business. Rather, as needed, there must be a way to bring the right parties to the table, and to use the results of their discussions to inform the Board in its decision-making.
Not everyone likes the use of task forces; that is true in the NCAA and in universities. They prefer the governance structures in place, in good part because of the predictability of the process and often the outcomes. And there are two dangers with ad hoc committees and task forces that must be guarded against. First, they cannot substitute for the bureaucracy; they advise it. And second, they cannot hang around like haunting ghosts long past their relevance. Their days should be numbered from the beginning.
But at times vertical, short-term, highly focused task forces can achieve results in a timely manner that standing governance committees cannot achieve. Flexibility in problem-solving is a virtue. Moreover, engaging other groups and persons without voice in a highly horizontal committee structure, develops wide-ranging support for solutions. In the end, the ultimate safeguard is that authority must reside with the Board.
The proposed revised governance structure in Division I and the occasional use of task forces increases the complexity of governance. But this increased complexity is offset by better advice and recommendations to the Board from diverse constituents and by improved wide-ranging support for the NCAA’s decisions. For a highly complex association, such as the NCAA, complex decision-making processes are a necessity.
In the end, we may succeed in giving our bureaucracies a good name.
Myles Brand is president of the NCAA.
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