NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland – The trick to communicating academic success is simple: Achieve the success in the first place.

That was the message delivered by a panel of presidents and administrators who have been involved in the forefront of Division I academic reform. The session was one of the most popular of Wednesday’s educational offerings, with few seats remaining in the ballroom for the late-afternoon presentation.

Most attention focused on the remarks of Middle Tennessee State President Sidney McPhee, whose institution confronted a dismal football Academic Progress Rate, and Georgia Athletics Director Damon Evans, who has sought to change the athletics/academics culture at his institution.

As a member of the Division I Board earlier this decade, McPhee enthusiastically supported academic-reform proposals. When the measures took effect, however, he was chagrined to learn that his own football program’s APR ranked last in Division I.

McPhee said academic reform suddenly became an intensely local matter, something for which the entire campus became responsible. “I didn’t blame the football coach of the athletics director,” he said. “The buck stopped with me.”

With the development of an “academic game plan” that involved virtually every corner of the university, Middle Tennessee State realized steady improvement in the academic performance of its football program and the athletics program in general. APR scores rose each year from 2003-04 through 2007-08, with football climbing from a dismal 812 to a sparkling 988 in five years.

McPhee said the formula involved accountability, incentives and public reports that allowed the program and the institution to “go beyond the rhetoric.”

The media has continued to cover the story, McPhee said, but they have been fair, chronicling the progress along the way. At the same time, fans have taken more pride in seeing that academic success does not somehow portend athletics failure.

Evans confronted a different set of circumstances at Georgia as he sought to change the impression that the athletics program was about big business rather than student-athlete educational development. As a new athletics director, he implemented a policy regarding missed class time, which quickly led to the suspension of a number of student-athletes. Coaches complained that the penalties were not fair, but Evans was quick to remind them that players certainly would be benched if they did not come to practice. The practice thus amounted to an educational benching.

Success followed, with the number of credit hours and grade-point averages soaring to record levels in the next semester. Evans said that internal buy-in improved along the way, even if donors remained a challenge at times. When one asked if Georgia was placing itself at a competitive disadvantage because of the stricter policy, Evans said, “Simply put, if a student-athlete doesn’t want to come to the University of Georgia because we want him to go to class and keep academic appointments, then we don’t want him.”

This was all good news to Walt Harrison, chair of Division I’s Committee on Academic Performance and one of the leading forces in the recent academic-reform movement. He said evidence is now available that demonstrates that previously underperforming teams are benefiting from the academic-success programs that have been developed to avoid penalties – so much so that few teams are expected to face academically related sanctions.

“And that’s good,” he said, “because I signed up to watch people improve, not to punish them.”