NCAA President Myles Brand’s core message during his State of the Association address January 12 at the NCAA Convention was that the benefits of intercollegiate athletics are far more lasting – both for the student-athlete participants and for the universities – than the time it takes to play the games.

Not only do athletics provide educational value, Brand said, but they also create community on campus and help institutions meet their obligations to engage the world beyond.

Those components anchored Brand’s sixth Convention speech, which revisited the familiar themes of the collegiate model and academic reform in Division I, but went further to celebrate athletics’ effect on molding productive citizens and to challenge institutions to spread their educational influence to potential student-athletes at an earlier age.

In his comments directed at reform, Brand said this year will be the most challenging in the reform movement’s six-year history. The fourth year of Academic Progress Rate data will be released this spring, and the data are robust enough now to eliminate an adjustment for smaller cohorts that had served as a statistical safety net for many squads. Thus, as many as 15 to 20 percent of men’s basketball teams could be subject to scholarship losses.

Critics of the structure say such sanctions reduce access to higher education for lower-resource students, but NCAA President Brand said the idea of reform is not to alter the “zip code” of recruits.

“We want to continue to recruit the students for our teams that we have in the past,” Brand said, “provided that with adequate assistance they can be successful academically. Our challenge is to convey the academic expectations of our institutions to athletically talented young students earlier in their careers.

“The need for competitiveness and the interest in winning must be coupled with a commitment to assist and encourage student-athletes to succeed academically. It is not competitiveness or academic success, it must be both.” Brand said. “The professional leagues have no parallel balance to create – for them, winning is everything. But our task in higher education is different, and frankly, more difficult.”

As an example of progress in that regard, Brand noted an ongoing effort in basketball with the NBA, high school federation and USA Basketball to “capture the attention of young men in a crowded marketplace.”

“We must, at all costs, refrain from setting up young players for failure,” Brand said. “It is exploitive to bring young men or women into college sports when they have little or no chance for academic success.”

Community engagement

Brand also emphasized a point Division II has been making recently – that athletics often serves as the “front porch” to the university in institutions’ effort to engage their surrounding communities.

“Athletics provides a good platform for universities to send messages to prospective students, and not just to athletes and the public,” Brand said. “A well-conducted, visible athletics program attracts favorable attention. When an institution recruits for the general student body, a successful athletics program can provide marketing that the university could not otherwise afford.”

Brand praised Division II’s community-engagement emphasis over the last two years, calling athletics a positive cause around which to rally. “Division II schools are using sports as a catalyst to build pride and loyalty. It is impressive to observe this movement in Division II gaining ground,” Brand said.

But Divisions I and III are enjoying the community benefits, too, Brand said. Athletics serves as an identifier for schools’ alumni and fan bases, a link that is increasing with today’s access to sports through technology.

“American college sports fans are among the most avid in the world,” Brand said. “There is little, if anything, in this country that produces feelings of affiliation with our institutions of higher education the way athletics can.”

Athletics in social justice

Besides intercollegiate athletics’ educational and community benefits, Brand noted college sports for its role in social justice.

Historically, athletics has aided social justice by providing scholarships to a diverse population. Over the years, Brand said, millions of low-income students have been able to attend college and receive a degree because of athletics support. Brand said the intellectual talent that has been enabled to flourish because of athletics support “is nothing short of phenomenal.”

Athletics’ subsequent positive influence on women and ethnic minorities also has made strides in the American social arena, Brand said. He cited a six-fold increase in participation for women since the passage of Title IX, and a sea change in ethnic-minority participation after Texas Western’s ground-breaking basketball championship in 1966.

But Brand cited more work on the social-justice front, particularly in protecting the core principles of Title IX and in improving the racial balance in the football coaching ranks.

“If intercollegiate athletics is to play its key role in higher education of helping promote social justice, as it should, then all of us – the NCAA national office and the more than 1,000 universities it represents – must recognize the challenges and commit ourselves to meet them.”

To read the speech in its entirety, see www.NCAA.org.