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May 5, 2010 9:08:43 AM

The NCAA News

 

NCAA President-Elect Mark Emmert recently answered questions of particular interest to the NCAA membership in an interview with The NCAA News.

The NCAA Executive Committee selected Emmert as president-elect on April 29. He will begin his duties no later than November 1.

 

NCAA News: People often say that the NCAA president does not possess the power to bring about needed change. How do you respond?

Mark Emmert: Obviously, I disagree. The power of the Association is vested in its membership, not just in the central office. And so when you think of the power and influence of the Association, it's incredibly broad and incredibly deep. We're capable of doing almost anything that the membership aspires to do and that we can collectively agree on. That's a pretty significant force.

Everyone is concerned about issues like the cost of supporting athletics programs on individual college and university campuses. The ability of the Association to govern those kinds of issues is limited to the clout the membership wants the Association to have collectively and the legal and political context and environment in which the Association exists.

So, when people say things like, "Well, the Association doesn't have the power or clout that it needs to solve issues," often they're referring to issues that some people would love to see the Association solve by dictate. "Coaches' pay should only be X." "We should have subpoena power to compel somebody to testify in an infractions issue." Obviously, the NCAA doesn't, and shouldn't, have those kinds of authorities.

I think that's what people are talking about. But, I think they're misunderstanding the nature of the Association itself.

 

NCAA News: Others say that because of the current state of college athletics, you've been appointed only to maintain the status quo. How do you respond?

Mark Emmert: If you look at what I have done in every leadership position I have ever held, my aspirations – and I believe my track record – demonstrate that I have been a very assertive leader in driving forward change and development that serves the broader interests of the academic community. The last thing I would ever use to describe myself as is a "status quo leader." Frankly, I can't think of a less accurate description.

I would tell you that "status quo" clearly was not the aim of the Executive Committee in selecting me. They were looking for someone who in fact was going to continue a transformative process. It may be that people heard me say I will continue to support the values and general objectives that the Association has been pursuing for a number of years. But the way we go about doing that and the vigor with which we pursue those goals and serve that mission, those will be anything but status quo.

 

NCAA News: What does it say about the power of athletics that the NCAA can attract leaders from such prestigious institutions?

Mark Emmert: It's a reflection of the importance of the NCAA and its role in American higher education. I see this as a leadership position not just in athletics but in an Association that is primarily a higher education association. And so for me, and any of the people who were looking at the position, there was this marvelous opportunity to help shape the lives and experiences of 400,000 students. Gosh, that's pretty compelling.

 

NCAA News: Why is a president best suited for this position?

Mark Emmert: Most importantly, I know from many, many years of practical experience what intercollegiate athletics looks like on the ground – how it affects our student-athletes and what the challenges are that face them, their coaches, their professors, their presidents. I bring to the job a very fundamental understanding of how all these issues manifest themselves, and that's terribly important.

Secondly, the Association in the past decade or so has had much more of a presidentially driven agenda. I know the various pressures and constraints and challenges that the modern university president faces. I suspect the Executive Committee found that of great interest.

Lastly, someone who's been at large, complex universities has seen all versions of athletics competition – whether it's our cross country team that doesn't get much attention even when it wins a championship or the large media draws of championship basketball and football. It's just that set of experiences that makes it valuable to have a university president leading this charge.

 

NCAA News: Would you like for the NCAA to be seen as something more than athletics?

Mark Emmert: I don't want to overstate the case to make it not realistic. We are an athletics organization. That's what we are and what we do. But we do it in the context of a collegiate educational experience. Student-athletes are students first, and we need the world to see that and we continue to act on those values. We need to make sure that people understand that we are all about providing student-athletes with great opportunities to compete and develop themselves as young men and women.

But it's also true that to maximize the NCAA's impact, we have to – and we get to – think about our impact beyond athletics. For example, I have already had a very good discussion with staff about K-12 education. We don't necessarily think about academic-eligibility issues in terms of K-12 reform; but when the NCAA sets its academic-eligibility requirements, we de facto start influencing the way high schools start thinking about their curriculum. That's incredible leverage. There are not many organizations that get to do that on a national level.

I know at UW when we say our admissions are going to require a certain kind of curriculum, the state of Washington pays attention but the state of Maryland doesn't care very much. When the NCAA says, "Here's what a student needs academically to compete in the NCAA," all the high schools and even some middle schools sit up and say, "Oh, really?" That's a fascinating way to leverage the academic influence.

The same thing is true about our academic progress and our graduation rates. When you start setting those standards that make student-athlete graduation rates higher than the student body, that's sending an exciting message – that student-athletes can engage in this incredibly demanding sport and outperform the rest of the student body academically. That's really nice leverage. We can, I hope, work with the educational leaders of the whole country, from the secretary of education on, to help drive academic reform.

 

NCAA News: As a sitting president, it may be inevitable that you'll be compared with Myles Brand over time. How do you feel following a president regarded as a groundbreaker in so many areas?

Mark Emmert: It's actually one of the real attractions of this job to follow Myles Brand because of the groundwork he laid, the values he emphasized and some of the transition that has already occurred.

There are people who will say, "Oh, you're the second university president." In my opinion, there ought to be – someday long from now – a third, a fourth, a fifth and even a 10th president. But Myles was the first. And I greatly appreciate that. He took on a task that no university president has ever taken on and did it splendidly. So, to follow that tradition is  a privilege.

 

NCAA News: To our members in Divisions II and III, with your background  at the Division I level, what assurance can you give them that you understand their concerns and are willing to help them with their level of competition?

Mark Emmert: First of all, I don't know Divisions II and III as well as I know Division I, and I've already reassured a number of presidents in those two divisions that I'll have to spend a lot of my time in the early going getting to know their membership and their issues more clearly. But I have spent a good bit of time paying attention to and looking at their strategic plans, their missions, their objectives and how they are doing in their own governance.

For example, I think the Division II presidents have created a terrific strategic plan with a  good action plan associated with it, and they are moving forward. It looks great. I know the Division III folks are looking at doing something very much like that. Their opportunities and challenges are certainly different in many ways than Division I. On the other hand, their core mission is very much the same – to shape the educational experiences of student-athletes. For Division II, that mission looks a little different than Division III and a little different from Division I, but the goals and objectives are exactly the same.

 

NCAA News: Among Dr. Brand's goals was to complete this iteration of academic reform. First, what do you think the effects of this movement have been, and second, what remains to be done to accomplish Dr. Brand's wish?

Mark Emmert: This iteration of reform changed the discussion a great deal. For a long time, we had been grappling with initial-eligibility questions and some not particularly robust measures of academic progress. The current standards and the current metrics added a lot more meat on those bones. You see the media now covering colleges' and universities' APRs. I think that's great.

We need to point out that it's not just about whether you're winning or losing an athletics contest; it's about whether you're winning or losing academically. We do have measures here that point to academic as well as athletics performance, and there's a benchmark that if you underperform, faculty, alumni and other students are going to say, "Gee, what's going on here?" Nothing works in America better than getting our competitive juices flowing. I want schools to say, "Yes, we're going to be competitive on the academic front, as well."

We've just enough time in place with reform to ask whether we have the right metrics. Are they really working? What kind of change is really happening on the ground so we can move into Phase Two of this? It's a never-ending project, and you have to be resilient and persistent because there's plenty of pressure in the other direction.

 

NCAA News: In one of the news conferences after you were appointed, you were asked about graduation rates, and you said, "The broader issue is making sure that every institution has appropriate graduation rates independent of whether they participate in the tournament. We need to make sure we're getting high-quality accountability and performance in the classroom, as well as on the athletics field." Do you see some type of academic metric tied to athletics opportunity in the future?

Mark Emmert: As I said then, perhaps we should consider whether you get to participate at all. The fact that you qualify or don't qualify to play in the championship maybe shouldn't be the benchmark. Maybe the benchmark should be whether you participate at all as an institution in that sport. It needs to be an assumption and expectation that universities and colleges will be striving to have all of their athletics programs demonstrating academic success. We need to look at the carrots and sticks that are in place right now; see what their impact is; and determine whether we want to modify them, add to them, subtract from them; but always with the goal of trying to make sure that every athletics program is academically successful.

 

NCAA News: You were a member of the NCAA's Presidential Task Force and even chaired one of the subcommittees. Based on that experience and your experience as president of two major universities, what are the biggest threats resulting from the financial pressures on both higher education and, in turn, athletics, and where do you draw the line when it comes to either the NCAA or its member schools participating in commercial activities?

Mark Emmert: As colleges and universities struggle with an array of budgetary and financial challenges, the first step is to ensure that people inside and outside the institutions understand the value of athletics as part of the educational experience. I know I sound like a broken record on that, but if athletics is seen as an independent, semi-autonomous, unrelated activity on a university campus, then its value is greatly diminished. If on the contrary – and in reality – it is seen as integral to and a part of the education and culture of an academic enterprise, then its value goes up. So when a college decides to direct X amount of resources to intercollegiate athletics, then it's not seen as diversionary from the academic enterprise but a piece of it. That's the first role the NCAA can articulate.

The concern that I have is that especially for Division I schools, as they struggle with athletics budgets, there will be a tendency, quite explicably, to focus on those few sports that generate significant revenue, such as football and men's basketball and a few others depending on individual schools. I worry that it will cause a redirection of resources inside athletics to make sure that they can make the revenue-producing programs be successful, and you wind up making athletics departments look and feel more like an independent entrepreneurial activity than an essential part of the collegiate experience. Those two forces combined are driving things in the same direction.

Then, of course, there is the concern about competitiveness. We all recognize that in many cases the costs of facilities and support and coaching staffs have been growing faster than other parts of university budgets. We have to keep it in perspective, though. For most schools – especially in Division I – athletics is a small part of the university budget. It is about 2 percent of the budget at the University of Washington and about 2 percent of our student body participates in athletics. That's a closely balanced model, which is a good thing. Our athletics budget is about $65 million, and that's a lot of money. But the University of Washington is a $4 billion enterprise. So, while it's 2 percent of my budget and 2 percent of my student body, athletics gets 98 percent of the attention. It looks and feels like it's a lot bigger than it really is. That's not to say it isn't big or there aren't challenges – there are. But you always have to put it in context.

 

NCAA News: Along those lines, there is tension at times between the Association's core mission and behaviors that are publicly perceived as contrary to that mission, such as the one-and-dones in basketball, big coaching salaries, and lower graduation rates in football and basketball. How can the NCAA stay true to its mission and values in the face of such pressures?

Mark Emmert: The tagline that there are 400,000 student-athletes and most of them will go pro is something other than sports is a mantra that people can now repeat all across this country. But you have to say it again and again and again; so that when you say NCAA, people don't think only of the basketball tournament or other championships or a high-profile issue that is the center of public debate. Rather, they think of the student-athlete who is having a unique educational experience through participating in athletics. We have to actively tell those 98 stories, as opposed to the two that seem to attract all of the attention, so that people understand what this Association is all about and what how positively powerful student participation in athletics is.

People love those stories. The MVP of this year's Pac-10 basketball tournament for example is a guy named Quincy Pondexter. I had him co-emcee our fund-raising gala; and here's Quincy – a handsome, big personality kind of kid in a tuxedo emceeing this black-tie event. People were blown away by this guy they previously knew only as a basketball player. Now, I could give 500 speeches about the educational value of athletics participation, but it wouldn't be as powerful as me simply introducing people to Quincy Pondexter.

 

NCAA News: Evaluate the recently announced broadcast agreement with CBS and Turner. Also, how aggressively will you explore entrepreneurial opportunities for the NCAA outside the bounds of the contract?

Mark Emmert: Yes, common sense would say we have to go after other opportunities. The basketball tournament for the foreseeable future will be by far the largest source of our revenue and we're very fortunate to have it. But we need to look at a variety of things both around media and elsewhere that are consistent with our values and that generate resources that can be deployed to drive the mission of the NCAA and our members.

The attention paid to the contract suggests people see those big numbers and say, "Well how do you square commercialism with amateurism when you're all about making money?" That's a false dichotomy. The fact is that the NCAA and its members need resources to pursue our mission. Meanwhile, there are eager audiences out there who love watching the basketball tournament and other championships. I'm one of them. If we can deploy those resources to the good purposes of the Association and our members, that's a great thing to do. So, yes, we need to look at other revenue sources to secure the future of this Association over the long run.