On any given day at the NCAA national office, staff members on their way to work invariably say to each other, "Well, it's time to serve the membership."

That refrain has become almost routine since the patriarch of the NCAA staff, Walter Byers, began making it a credo in 1952 by molding modest resources and a handful of dedicated workers into a well-oiled service machine.

Fifty years later, that machine comprises 330 employees in a four-story architectural showcase in downtown Indianapolis. Yet, as much as the outer crust of the staff and its confines have changed, Byers' inner core of serving the membership hasn't.

Or has it?

There have been at least subtle changes in philosophy through the years under the direction of Byers and his two successors, Richard D. Schultz and Cedric W. Dempsey. And as the NCAA staff embraces its 51st year with a fourth CEO to be hired
by November, the philosophy probably faces another twist.

Current NCAA President Dempsey supported that notion in a memorandum to the Executive Committee, saying the NCAA president should be more than just an administrator. "The relationship between the NCAA president and the Executive Committee is similar to that which exists between a university's president and its board of trustees," Dempsey noted. "The president must articulate a direction for the organization."

To most of the membership, it probably doesn't mean that the NCAA president and staff should tell institutions what to do, though there are occasions where that appears to be desired. It also probably doesn't mean having the staff take an advocacy role, though again, Byers, Schultz and Dempsey all have done their share of advocating during their tenures. But presidents do appear to want something more than just "service." The challenge is making the practitioners of Association business -- athletics directors, conference commissioners, senior woman administrators and faculty athletics representatives -- comfortable with whatever that may be.

To serve or lead?

The issue of blending service and leadership has been at the heart of staff operations for half a century, during which time the level of staff involvement in policy-making has ebbed and flowed. When Byers established the first national office in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1952, he told the Executive Committee that "the executive director and staff exist to execute policy, not formulate it."

And Byers made sure his employees understood that.

"I suspect all of us at one time or another were admonished by him when we strayed from that plan," said Louis J. Spry, who retired from the national office staff in 1999 after a 30-year career that spanned working for all three CEOs. "I recall one staff member who was asked to go to the microphone at a Convention and clarify an interpretation, and I watched him hesitate and look at Walter before even going up there. That's how ingrained Byers' 'execute policy and not make policy' credo was in all of us."

"Walter wasn't just a service guy as he sometimes is made out to be," said Byers' first hire, Wayne Duke, who later became commissioner of the Big Eight and Big Ten Conferences. "He in fact was very influential in directing activities that shaped college athletics. He was a silent leader who worked behind the scenes with great dignity and tremendous foresight."

The result, said Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany, was that Byers became a great administrator through influence.

"To say that what happened under Byers was simply a reflection of 'unguided membership will' is probably an overstatement," said Delany, who spent four years as an enforcement representative in the Byers regime. "Byers had a good sense of where the Council was on issues and what the challenges were. The staff during his tenure was positioned to appear to be only reflecting the will of the membership, but I think they were more active than that."

Spry said Schultz "won the hearts of a lot of staff quickly" with his more flexible management style. Schultz also was more visible in the membership than Byers, something the Executive Committee that hired him obviously wanted. He loosened the reins on the staff and let it become more involved in internal decisions.

"If you have a professional staff -- and I believe the NCAA always has had one -- then you need to listen to that staff, and they need to have a major role in the decision-making process," Schultz said. "I've always felt that if you put staff in that position, they are more productive."

One way that Schultz emphasized the staff role was by creating the executive director's State of the Association address at the annual Convention. That was a major departure from the Byers way of doing business.

"The Presidents Commission wasn't just a new body, but a successful one, one that gained support from other presidents for significant reform," Renfro said. "And now, there is a structure committed to the leadership of CEOs. And because of time commitments and presidents' inclinations, CEOs expect something different from staff."

Thus, as the NCAA governance structure has put presidents in position to assume more control over intercollegiate athletics, they have asked the NCAA's top position to assume more control as well. But a number of nonpresidents in the membership are concerned about what that means.

The pendulum swing

There have been recent examples that cloud the issue. Two years ago at the NCAA Convention, Southeastern Conference Commissioner Roy Kramer proclaimed loudly during a contentious Division I forum that the staff was advocating a position on the amateurism deregulation package by handing out four-color "information" materials at the door, materials that interestingly enough had been initiated by a membership committee.

Kramer wasn't the lone detractor. One athletics director said he was "perplexed" by the materials that seemed to indicate "a position for the membership to take on the issue." The Division I director, who asked not to be identified, said, "The membership is in a foxhole every day and the staff is supposed to serve a support role. But it's almost presumptive of the staff to jump into an issue in that foxhole with the membership. And on the deregulation of amateurism, I felt that had happened. The staff role of service had changed to one of influence. That was troubling."

President Dempsey was outspoken in favor of the package and even made it one of his presidential priorities, but to those who were resistant to change, the push seemed to be interpreted as a shove. In the end, different versions of the project were approved in Divisions II and III, and only minimal change was made in Division I.

Another recent example occurred in April when Division I Management Council members raised concerns over forms from the national office asking for information about "financial relationships" between institutions and summer basketball events. Even though the legislation to provide "sunshine" about those financial affairs came from an NCAA committee, Council members thought the wealth of information requested on the forms overstepped the intent of the legislation. One Council member said it was an example of breakdowns "between the advocacy role of institutional representatives and the staff carrying out their mandates."

After the Council meeting, the staff again reviewed the issue to determine how much information was required by the legislation, and determined that only a few changes should be made to the forms. Those changes were then approved by the Basketball Issues Committee and re-circulated to the membership.

Then there are the NCAA's enforcement procedures, which have been scrutinized since their inception. They were called into question again by members of the National Association of Basketball Coaches who said in March that the NCAA has been "overzealous" in its pursuit of identifying international student-athletes who may have been involved with professional teams. But when faced with a recent opportunity to change the rules so that those players would not be affected, the Division I Management Council declined.

Those examples contribute to uncertainty about whether the staff should back off or step up.

Ohio Valley Conference Commissioner Dan Beebe, another former staffer, calls it a pendulum swing.

"Sometimes things are perceived to have gone too far one way, so when the pendulum swings back it goes too far the other way," Beebe said. "In my 20 years with the NCAA, we've experienced varying degrees of that kind of activity by the staff."

Beebe, an enforcement representative in the 1980s, said he remembers a time when staff might not have been involved enough. He noted that when the athletics certification program was started, the membership perceived it to be staff-driven, which presented a unique set of challenges.

"Staff backed way off of their input during early peer review visits," he said. "That was a natural reaction from the criticism. They wanted to make sure that the members were the ones doing this through peer reviews, not through the staff liaison who was on campus. But I think we went a little too far in that regard and sometimes we got varying results from campus to campus because the staff person wasn't involved enough."

Another example of that occurred after September 11 when it appeared some institutions were looking for an "answer" about whether to conduct competition the following weekend.

"The membership is hard to read on what it wants the staff to be," said the Big Ten's Delany. "If people want certain things, they work with the staff; if people don't want certain things, they criticize the staff."

University of Missouri, Kansas City, Athletics Director Bob Thomas has been on both sides of the NCAA fence, having served on the compliance and legislative services staff between stints at member schools. He said partly because of Byers and partly because of what had become a veteran staff, the national office garnered a reputation for being a "stodgy group that was very particular about the way it does things."

But Thomas said that was a characteristic he actually appreciated before and when he worked there. "When something came from the office," Thomas said, "you knew there would be a high level of consistency in the way it was written and presented. You knew as a member what to expect from the office, and that standard was high. It was not only a service to institutions, but a challenge back to institutions to maintain those standards and stay true to the course."

Now Thomas is among members concerned that the tremendous turnover in the staff over the past five years and an apparent shift in philosophy have perched the staff too far from its stodgy roots. In other words, Thomas wouldn't mind seeing the pendulum swing the other way.

"There is a desire for the NCAA to be more firm, consistent and clear," he said. "There was a time people were saying that the office needed to relax a bit, and I think it did, but you don't want it to relax so much that you become less clear on what the mission is and what the philosophies are behind amateur athletics."

Working the trenches

Thomas' point may be rooted in a broader concern that the national office staff is becoming more and more detached from everyday campus life. Most campus people agree that for the staff to be effective in service or leadership, employees have to know how legislation affects intercollegiate athletics on the ground floor.

To hear today's membership talk, staff ears haven't dried. Rather, the move of the national office to Indianapolis has made the situation worse, creating a greener group of "leaders."

Bob Minnix, Florida State University's associate athletics director for compliance, and a top enforcement rep under Byers, worries that "the staff still has issues in terms of being detached from the campus," and that staff members "seem to have an inability to comprehend what is going on in the trenches."

And Phil Buttafuoco, commissioner of the Eastern College Athletic Conference, said, "There are a number of individuals now at the office who have not served on a campus. It's difficult for them to understand the pressures and issues we deal with in the membership."

In the early days, that lack of campus experience may have been a result of hiring practices. Byers believed in signing people at the beginning of their careers, which in effect turned the office into a training ground for campus jobs. The practice also kept operational costs down because staff salaries were low. When Schultz came on board, he tried to keep at least his senior staff members around for five years in order to maintain continuity.

"I felt if we lost them after two or three years, they were just at the point where they were productive," Schultz said. "If we lost them after five years to the membership, then I didn't feel so bad because we were providing a good training ground. Having those people out in conference offices and universities I felt would eventually strengthen the position of the staff and expand in a positive way a better understanding of what the NCAA was and what it did."

Dempsey also believes in experience, saying that college sports have become "too complicated to have the national office serve only as a feeder system."

But two factors have complicated the issue of staff experience. One is the Executive Committee's 1997 decision to move the office, which stripped years of experience and institutional knowledge from the organization. About two-thirds of the staff, including many senior managers and administrators, did not journey east from Kansas City, leaving the national office vulnerable in key areas. The enforcement staff was especially affected, losing 14 employees with more than 121 years of experience.

The other factor is membership-driven. Many experienced staff members, particularly those in membership services, are lured to member institutions and conference offices for higher-paying jobs. The subsequent challenge is that a membership hungry for reliable interpretations becomes frustrated by the lack of staff continuity, though it is the schools themselves that contribute to the depleted resources.

Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice-president for membership services, takes a high-road approach, realizing that in the end, experience helps the NCAA, whether it is in-house or on campus. But he also is realistic about the challenges.

"In the broadest sense, it's not just a matter of what resources we have vs. what resources the membership has," Lennon said. "We're all in this together. Having said that, there is a certain expectation that when anyone at the campus or conference level needs help, the national office is the place to go. That's a bit of a challenge when we are staffed by individuals who are in some cases not as experienced as those calling."

"We have been fortunate to attract a number of high-quality individuals with significant campus experience in all three divisions," Lennon said.

Still, Lennon said, staff members are placed in an awkward position when the membership wants them to provide a definitive answer, whether they have campus experience or not.

"Still, we hear athletics administrators say, 'My boss wants to know what the NCAA thinks.' So there are those out there who want the NCAA to tell them what to do, which puts additional pressure on our staff."

So what is the ideal staff role?

When asked, there aren't many staff members -- current or former -- who stray from the service credo.

Ron Stratten, another former/current staff member who left as an enforcement director and came back as vice-president for education services, said that response is natural from a group that has served infinitely longer than it has been asked to lead.

"The paradigm shift created by the Executive Committee's request to Ced for more leadership creates some tension if the athletics directors, conference commissioners and faculty reps aren't comfortable with it," he said. "That presents a challenge for the staff, and there doesn't seem to be any direction being provided as to how to get it done."

Dempsey said presidents need to keep repeating the charge if they truly believe in it. "If the goal is to provide leadership, and I think it is," Dempsey said, "CEOs have to continue to articulate that to the membership, otherwise it puts staff in an awkward position."

University of Tulsa President Bob Lawless, who not only chairs the Executive Committee but also the NCAA search committee that is involved in selecting Dempsey's successor, said presidents are prepared to reiterate the leadership message.

"When the Association restructured and went to a president/CEO instead of an executive director, leadership responsibilities normally associated with a university CEO came with it," Lawless said. "The Executive Committee is making it clear that presidents want to move from a principal staff position to a leadership position.

"While that may be point of tension with the membership -- there often is great resistance to change -- the Executive Committee, consistent with restructuring, is looking to move the NCAA into a more forward-thinking pattern."

Lennon believes such forward thinking can be accomplished without compromising the service standard to which the membership has become accustomed. In fact, though the word "leadership" is being bandied about, leadership through service may end up looking familiar. Lennon said the staff always has evaluated legislative proposals, framed complicated issues and advanced recommendations, but those functions weren't talked about as being "leadership" until recently.

"Building alternatives for consideration and sometimes advancing those alternatives has been the staff's role since its inception," Lennon said. "But at the same time, if there's no buy-in at some point from the membership, a good leader will know when it's time to retreat. I think if we define leadership that way, I wonder whether there really is a chasm between what the presidents want and what the practitioners expect from us."

Lawless said while leadership is defined differently by different people, in the end it is "something you do more than something you talk about."

"In general," Lawless said, "Leadership is the ability for individuals to determine, whether through interaction with constituents or otherwise, the needed direction for an organization and then be able by logic and persuasion to get the organization moving that way. At a university setting, trustees select a CEO based on their ideas and their assessment of whether that individual can take the university where the board wants it to go. In that sense, the Executive Committee is to the NCAA as a board of trustees is to a university."

Dempsey, who calls himself the "first generation" of the leadership charge, said while feelings about leadership certainly vary within the membership, "the comfort level will grow as the presidents reiterate the message and as more people in the membership become accustomed to that philosophy."

That evolution may be expedited if the Association's next CEO is a former university CEO.

If everything falls into place, in fact, one wonders whether 50 years from now, staff members will turn to each other on their way to work and say, "Well, it's time to lead the membership."