NCAA News Archive - 2001

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Briefly in the News

Sep 10, 2001 2:55:02 PM

The NCAA News

WAC boosts social, academic purpose in new campaign

The Western Athletic Conference has announced a new promotional campaign featuring a statement of purpose, identity and commitment. The principal message is a takeoff of the WAC acronym: WAC -- Where Actions Count.

Four other uses of the abbreviation WAC -- Where Athletes Count; Where Academics Count; Where Achievements Count; and Where Attitudes Count -- make up the conference's five guiding statements.

"Our principal message is that the WAC is distinguished by its actions, is committed to performance, is focused on impacting lives and is driven to excel," said WAC Commissioner Karl Benson.

"These traits are the foundations upon which we are building our future. The WAC has a rich and proud history. We now are defining a future course of action that will mold the next 40 years."

To introduce the campaign, the WAC has produced a four-color brochure, which will be part of a mass distribution to season-ticket holders throughout the conference and to the media nationwide. The WAC also will distribute new television and radio commercials during the course of the conference's football and basketball seasons.

The WAC, which added Boise State University and Louisiana Tech University as its ninth and 10th members in July, kicked off its 40th year of competition last month with a nationally televised football game between WAC-member California State University, Fresno, and the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The conference also recently signed a three-year contract with ESPN, and it launched a newly designed Web site, www.WACSports.
com, in July.

The WAC's new promotional materials also feature the academic accomplishments of its member schools' athletics teams, noting that four WAC teams were among the top 30 schools in football graduation rates in 2000.

Colgate drops 'Red'

Colgate University announced recently that it has decided to drop the word "Red" from its nickname. The school's athletics teams no longer will be known as the "Red Raiders," but as the "Raiders."

The school's board of trustees, acting on a recommendation from the school's president, athletics director and campus Committee on Athletics, announced that the change was being made to remove any possible inference of a racial stereotype.

The nickname originally was coined as a reference to the new maroon uniforms of the 1932 football team, but in later years American Indian mascots and figures were associated with the team. The school dropped all such uses itself in the 1970s, but the board of trustees noted that references and American Indian caricatures had lingered, causing the Committee on Athletics, a group that includes students, faculty and staff, to recommend the change.

The board also noted that the New York state education department had encouraged high schools in the state to change nicknames and mascots that signal a racial stereotype and that "Red Raiders" was on that targeted

Hall honors coaches

Two prominent men's college basketball coaches are among those named by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as members of its Class of 2001.

Duke University men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and Temple University men's basketball coach John Chaney will be inducted into the hall October 5 at the Springfield Civic Center in Springfield, Massachusetts.

"For someone who has spent their life dedicated to the game of basketball, election into the Basketball Hall of Fame is the crowning achievement of their career," said John L. Doleva, chief operating officer of the hall.

This year's class will be the last inducted into the current Basketball Hall of Fame, which opened along the Connecticut River in downtown Springfield in 1985. Construction of a new Basketball Hall of Fame is underway, and the new 100,000-square-foot museum is scheduled to open next summer.

Krzyzewski, who led Duke to NCAA titles in 1991, 1992 and 2001, was named on his first time on the ballot.

For more information on the new hall, see www.hoophall.com.

-- Compiled by Kay Hawes

Number Crunching

Looking back

September 1989 -- Recommendations resulting from the first meeting to obtain a national consensus on ways to curtail the abuse of anabolic/androgenic steroids are presented to officials who are organizing President Bush's "war on drugs." The recommendations, which deal with research, intervention, education and prevention, are the result of a meeting among representatives of medicine, education, government and sports. The meeting was sponsored by the National Task Force on Anabolic/Androgenic Steroids, which is a cooperative effort of the NCAA, the U.S. Olympic Committee, the National Federation of State High School Associations and the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles.

(The NCAA News, September 11, 1989)

September 1983 -- The NCAA's Select Committee on Athletic Problems and Concerns in Higher Education delivers its report to college and university presidents. The committee, appointed by the NCAA Council, was charged with developing new and revised policies to deal with the most pressing problems in college athletics. The group is composed primarily of Division I representatives because most of the problems the committee addressed were prevalent at the Division I level. Among the group's preliminary recommendations are tightened academic standards for Division I student-athletes; a satisfactory-progress requirement that respects institutional autonomy; consideration of publishing schools' graduation rates; encouraging more institutional control over coaches' salaries; and the establishment of a board or council of presidents that would have authority to (1) review Association activities and advise the NCAA Council, (2) commission studies of matters of concern in intercollegiate athletics and (3) propose legislation directly to the Convention.

(The NCAA News, September 26, 1983)

Who was talking

"This kind of issue is not black and white. Management is the right solution. Supplementation is not going away. It's not going anywhere but up. This is going to be huge in our lifetime."