Another means to promote sportsmanship in the league is the development of the Sun Belt Sportsmanship Award, which is given at various levels. On every campus, each Sun Belt-sponsored team nominates one student-athlete. From its nominees, each institution selects one female and one male as its institutional representatives for the Sportsmanship Award. From the institutional representatives, the conference's senior woman administrators select one female and one male recipient of the Sun Belt Sportsmanship Award.

All nominees receive recognition.

Often, we hear only about those student-athletes who display poor sportsmanship. The Sun Belt Sportsmanship Awards are meant to recognize those who stand for the integrity and goodness in collegiate athletics. The award considers not only sportsmanship, but also leadership and citizenship, which go hand-in-hand.

These policies are just a start to cleaning up the image of poor sportsmanship in collegiate athletics. They won't transform the nation's thinking overnight. Poor sportsmanship is not a problem solely in the college ranks, but it is prevalent at the high-school and professional levels as well.

However, we have to begin somewhere. Perhaps the starting point is to stress the importance of good sportsmanship at the collegiate level. Hopefully, that attitude will trickle down to the young girls and boys who watch our college teams and attend our sport camps. If kids learn the importance of good sportsmanship early, maybe problems we see in the college and professional ranks will be alleviated.

An underlying theme of our universities is to arm students with the skills that will make them successful in life. Doesn't sportsmanship fall into that category?

Craig Thompson is commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference.

Letter to the Editor - Minorities do need to take back schools

This letter is in response to a comment made by George Washington University men's basketball coach Mike Jarvis that appeared in the Opinions section of the September 22 issue of The NCAA News.

Today more than ever, the NCAA initial-eligibility standards affect minorities. Mr. Jarvis mentions that most of the time, things like this are by design. If anything, I believe they are the result of non-deliberation.

For instance, only in the past 15 years or so have we come to the conclusion that the "standardized tests" are economically and culturally biased. I don't think that they are meant to hinder anyone of any race or culture. The fact is that the tests don't consider the different types of economic and cultural backgrounds. I don't think their creators ever envisioned such a problem. Is it possible to create tests that accommodate all types of backgrounds? I don't think so.

The solution is simple. I totally agree with Mr. Jarvis that communities have to start taking back the schools. Why blame someone or something when it is within all of our God-given talents to conquer such tests?

I don't think our minorities are taking education as seriously as they need to take it. Students have to start beating the odds. Academic scholarships and loans are created for a reason.

I encourage all minorities to take pride in who you are and what you do every day. This is a cold world, and if you lose your direction and focus, you'll disappear in the background.

Matt Allen, Men's Assistant Basketball Coach, Wingate University

Opinions -- Black coaches want level competition for top positions

Tony Dungy, head coach
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
American Football Quarterly

"You hope people are hiring coaches to win, not just to sell tickets or make alumni happy. You're fighting some hiring practices that are entrenched. It's tough to get people to break out of the mold of what's been done before. You'd like to think that out of 35 openings, there'd be more than one (minority hire). Everyone's looking for high-profile big names, and that's not always the best way to go.

"I don't think anyone is going to say, 'I don't want a black head coach.' What they say is they want a young coach, a players' coach, a disciplinarian. For whatever reason, that person hasn't been black."

Michael Huyghue, vice-president of football operations
Jacksonville Jaguars
American Football Quarterly

"The pool of (black) people who are selected for these positions is so small to begin with, that's why there's not enough movement of African-Americans. It's not just the end result of becoming a head coach. It's getting in the position to become coordinators, getting the responsibility that goes with it, getting the media exposure."

Ray Rhodes, head coach
Philadelphia Eagles
The New York Times

"I want to win a championship -- everybody does -- but as a black man, I want to get that done because winning helps open the door. It's important that me and Tony Dungy and Denny Green do a good enough job where people will say, 'We're going to take a look at Emmitt Thomas, take a look at Sherman Lewis.'

"They ask me why I take losses so hard. Because when we lose, I'm not only letting myself down. I'm letting down a lot of people in life, especially those depending on somebody to make a spark and make everybody proud."

Integrity

Donald Kaul
Nationally syndicated columnist

"It remains to be seen whether schools can compete for national championships in the major sports and still maintain their integrity. The most conspicuous examples of those trying are either in the Big Ten or the Pac-10, and those conferences are about to junk their mutually exclusive Rose Bowl pact to enter an unholy alliance with the rest of the world to play a single game for the national football championship. More television money.

"Football writers love the idea of a national champion in football, naturally -- it's another thing to write about -- but it's a dumb idea. Isn't one overhyped, oversold, overcommercialized Super Bowl enough?

"What hope there is in the world of college athletics is offered by kids such as Danny Wuerffel, last year's Heisman Trophy winner as college player of the year. When it was suggested his skills might not be adequate for pro football, he said:

"'If I never play a down in the NFL, my life will not be affected at all. There will be other opportunities in other areas where I'm sure I'd be just as happy. If money was the only thing I was looking out for, then that would be a big disappointment, because there's money in the NFL. But life to me is much more than money.'

"It would be comforting if more of our great colleges felt the same."

Gender equity

Brian R. Cook, attorney
The Boston Herald

"In the pros, big-time sports means a sense of entitlement, in addition to the money. It means free cars, free clothes, free meals, better seats in restaurants. It brings fame and the by-products of fame, both positive and negative. But maybe it also brings the delusion that the adoration and respect are deserved without more. And when the applause and the adoration and respect disappear with the emergence of a new phenom or after the contract has expired, the delusion brings anger and resentment and a need to remind the public -- or your wife and family -- of who you used to be, even if you have to beat it into their thick skulls!

"It is also leads to cameras and front-page stories when the famous are involved in domestic abuse or driving-while-intoxicated charges or drug possession.

"I can't help but think that as I watch baseball players who beat out singles and beat up their wives or football players whose drug escapades get as much ink as their touchdowns or basketball players whose freakish need to cross dress is just a way to steal a headline, that women athletes have not competed with men in this regard. As a person who makes his living representing athletes (male and female), and maybe more importantly recently the father of a newborn baby girl, I can't help but think that women just don't get this gender equality thing in sports. I hope they never do."

Bowl alliance

Richard Rosenblatt, sportswriter
The Associated Press

Reacting to the release of future bowl alliance schedules, which spread games over several days in early January:

"The bowl alliance was created to put together a national title game matching No. 1 vs. No. 2. For the most part, it has succeeded, even without the Rose Bowl and the Pac-10 and Big Ten champs in the mix.

"By extending the postseason a few extra days and moving the Rose Bowl to a night game, ABC and the alliance have gone too far.

"OK. Give us a title game on January 2, but stop with the manipulating. Play the rest on January 1, college football's glamour day.

"Anyone say playoff system?"

Roy F. Kramer, commissioner
Southeastern Conference
The Associated Press

"The World Series is at night and the NBA makes sure its big games are on the right days. We live in a world of TV, and that includes college athletics. Sports fans understand that."

Basketball recruiting