The question posed by the title of the NCAA’s first Scholarly Colloquium – “College Sports: A Legitimate Focus for Scholarly Inquiry?” – was answered with a resounding “yes” Thursday as presenters, reactors and participants listened to and then debated papers addressing the value and values of intercollegiate athletics.

Lead-off presenter Jay Coakley from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, talked about the inhibitors facing faculty in the sports research arena. Robert Simon from Hamilton College discussed whether academics and athletics can be mutually supportive, and Kentucky’s John Thelin helped the audience navigate the extremes of college sports evaluation.

Coakley said athletics is ripe for research, provided both the researcher and the subject truly understand the intent of the exercise. He cited university-based and scholarly-discipline constraints in particular. There are few incentives, he said, for comprehensive study in a field that is not regarded as a serious scholarly pursuit at many institutions, and that those being studied – the athletics departments themselves – often resist providing the data if they suspect it will be used against them.

As North Carolina Faculty Athletics Representative Jack Evans put it, the people who have the data often don’t want to be studied, and the people who would do the research aren’t always drawn to the integration of mind/body as a scholarly pursuit.

“The bottom line,” said Evans, one of two predetermined reactors to Coakley’s paper, “is that the people who would do the research have other opportunities that entail less risk, more reward and fewer headaches. What Jay is describing is not the best turf for non-tenured faculty members.”

Coakley called for bridging trust gaps to not only better integrate athletics within the educational mission, but also to allow for more research upon which to build those integration platforms. At the Division I level, though, Coakley said institutionalizing such a process “seems like an insurmountable challenge.”

In the question-and-answer session after Coakley’s presentation, Drew University Athletics Director Connee Zotos said the problem starts at the top with presidents, vice presidents and deans who allow athletics to work in a vacuum, and ADs who allow coaches to work similarly isolated. She called for changing a culture “that is against asking questions” and creating one in which there is some ethos. “That kind of change has to come from the top,” she said.

To Coakley’s scholarly-discipline constraint, NCAA President Myles Brand acknowledged “an inherent uneasiness about the body in certain areas of research” and a hierarchy in which intellectual endeavors take precedence over body studies. “We have to get past that,” Brand said.

‘Mutually supportive’

Simon’s presentation addressed critics who frequently maintain that intercollegiate athletics undermine the academic mission of colleges and universities, if not in principle then generally in practice. He examined certain major arguments for such a view and also considered the claim that intercollegiate athletics and academics not only can be compatible but also can be mutually supportive.

William Morgan, one of the reactors to Simon’s paper, disagreed with Simon’s latter claim, at least in big-time football and men’s basketball. In those sports, he said, market norms govern behavior in ways that compromise the players’ educational well-being.

In the day’s final presentation, Thelin said college sports is a magnet for extremes – either exposes about scandal or uncritical celebration, neither of which is particularly helpful.

“Good, serious writing about college sports requires careful sifting and sorting that avoids two polarities in the popular media: exaggerated praise and celebration versus sensational exposes and allegations of excess and abuse,” he said.

Current Penn State professor and former USA Today writer Malcolm Moran reacted to Thelin’s paper, saying “John emphasized the commitment to an informed concern. There is a polarity in the popular media – the sensational often translates to incorrect.”

The Colloquium is the first of three designed to encourage scholars to generate sound research that informs academic-reform policy decisions now and over the next several years. In addition to the presentations at the Colloquium, the papers and reactions will be published in a new journal this spring. In a subsequent edition of the journal next fall, there will be a juried call for papers. Colloquia also will precede the 2009 Convention in Washington, D.C., and the 2010 Convention in San Antonio.

Penn State professor Scott Kretchmar, who chaired an editorial and advisory board that administered the Colloquium, said he believes the event will accomplish its mission.

“Nearly everyone has called for more faculty involvement,” he said. “We need involvement simply as oversight to assure that the activities we sponsor, including sports, are consistent with our core values and purposes. Second, we must engage faculty in research, share the research and apply the findings with the goal of improving everyone involved in athletics, but particularly student-athletes.

“Why now? By stimulating research, we are contributing to a movement already underway. This is a time of reform, where we need even more information, and objective people examining the athletics enterprise. We need to transcend any ‘we/they’ thinking of the past and join forces to find remedies where they are needed.”

NCAA President Brand equated the Colloquium to the role of the university in the research arena.

“When I began my tenure as president, the first thing that struck me is that the NCAA bears some analogy to universities, and that wasn’t always recognized by the athletics community,” he said. “The NCAA helps advance knowledge through research. We have for a long time internally engaged in research, in accordance with our strategic plan in which our decision-making is based on data. But we also need research based on college sports – not the kinds of evaluative approach – the media does plenty of that – but high-quality, multi-disciplinary work.”