Knight Commission members will deliberate – and celebrate – when they mark the group’s 20th anniversary at an October 26 meeting in Miami.

To commemorate the October 1989 founding of the reform-minded commission, current and former members will convene to continue discussing economic factors affecting college sports and also reflect on two decades of the group’s emphasis on presidential-led change.

The meeting features two panel sessions, one focusing on retaining educational values as commercial pressures mount against decision-makers in college sports. Panelists include Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany and Arizona President Emeritus Peter Likins, who co-chaired the late NCAA President Myles Brand’s Presidential Task Force that urged athletics departments to moderate spending in the group’s 2006 report.

The other session assesses the commission’s effect on the intercollegiate athletics landscape over time. Panelists include former NCAA President Cedric Dempsey and current Ohio State Athletics Director Gene Smith. The commission’s initial report in 1991 was acclaimed for its “one-plus-three” model that urged presidential control of the enterprise, certification of athletics programs and fiscal integrity in athletics operating budgets.

Commission co-chair Brit Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system, said the October 26 meeting will continue the commission’s focus on what he called the third phase of broad-based reform. He said the commission and the presidents in NCAA leadership over the last two decades have successfully implemented a governance structure for intercollegiate athletics that puts presidents in charge, and that the academic reforms accomplished from certification to the APR have essentially completed the second phase.

“Now in phase three, the commission is turning to the spiraling costs of intercollegiate athletics in a time when our universities are under great financial pressure,” Kirwan said. “How do we better balance our athletics expenditures and align them more with our core mission of academics?”

As part of the discussion, the commission will unveil results from an opinion survey of university presidents in the Football Bowl Subdivision conducted throughout the last year on college sports finances. Kirwan said those results will demonstrate “some significant overlap of views on costs and concerns about where we are headed, and also some uncertainty on how we bring costs under control.”

The commission also plans to launch “College Sports 101,” an interactive, Web-based report that provides an overview of the business and economic landscape of college sports. Kirwan said the effort provides “baseline information” about intercollegiate athletics – how it operates and how it is funded – for a general audience.

“We think there is a lot of confusion out there about how intercollegiate athletics works within the university, certainly within the general public but even on some campuses as well,” he said. “College Sports 101 is an attempt to describe in basic but meaningful and helpful ways the intercollegiate athletics enterprise within a university context.”

The commission also still plans to release a comprehensive report in 2010 based on these survey results that Kirwan said will essentially complete the initial three-prong agenda the panel was charged with implementing 20 years ago when the group was created.

“The commission has performed an invaluable service to higher education by bringing focus and attention to some of the challenges that universities have faced with intercollegiate athletics over the years, and by providing a forum for discussion and the development of ideas,” he said. “We’re in a much better place today with intercollegiate athletics because of the commission.

“The commission has a platform that gives it a certain air of independence and a broader perspective because its membership includes people who aren’t university administrators – people from the private sector, concerned citizens and leaders in our society. Since intercollegiate athletics is so imbedded within the culture of the country, that broader perspective gives the commission a voice and the opportunity to provide comment and suggest direction that you can’t really get by dealing with these issues entirely within the university or NCAA governance structure.”