President Bob Lawless from the University of Tulsa is highly qualified to direct the search for our next NCAA president, but it will not be an easy job. In an article in the April 5 Chronicle of Higher Education, President Lawless repeats a familiar refrain that the respective Bowl Championship Series commissioners should not be strong candidates for the presidency because of their focus on the "commerce" of intercollegiate athletics.

My father faithfully reminded me that whenever I pointed the "finger of blame" at someone else, I should always remember that the other three fingers on that hand were pointing directly back at me. The truth is that we all share the blame for the misplaced priorities in intercollegiate athletics today, although it would be easy to make the case that the three fingers point directly back to our college presidents, who hire the commissioners of the respective conferences and who annually provide those commissioners with their job descriptions and their goals.

And therein lies the single greatest flaw of today's NCAA governance structure. Our presidents themselves have become enmeshed in the quest to protect the financial and competitive interests of their respective conferences and/or institutions. The presidents are not alone since every member of every NCAA committee is chosen to represent the financial and competitive interests of their respective conference. Not one single individual at any NCAA committee meeting has been sent to that meeting with the charge to do "what is right for intercollegiate athletics, regardless of the short-term consequences for their conference and/or institution."

Under such a structure, each piece of legislation becomes a political football that is pushed from one end of the field to the other interminably with neither side able to even score a touchdown, much less win the game. (I would define "winning the game" as changing the momentum of today's self-serving intercollegiate athletics culture.)

I also must take issue with the unattributed comments on Ced Dempsey's leadership abilities stated in the Chronicle of Higher Education

article. President Dempsey stepped boldly into this morass of squabbling self-interest by speaking forcefully and often of the commercialism that threatens the very bond between intercollegiate athletics and its role in the educational mission of our institutions. He even climbed way out on the leadership limb to offer a vision of how to begin substantial reform, including a return to freshman ineligibility.

President Dempsey also has aggressively addressed issues involving student-athlete welfare. He has demonstrated a sensitivity to the needs of women and minorities, and he certainly has shown himself to be an effective financial steward. For all of this, he deserves praise for a job well done.Yet unnamed "associates" in the Chronicle say his leadership qualities are not "ideally suited" to the newly restructured NCAA.

I do not believe Ced Dempsey's leadership qualities are the issue. Instead, I believe the issue is the resolve of our membership to accept responsibility for positive change. Until that happens, especially at the presidential level, the "leadership qualities" of anybody serving as NCAA president will be compromised.

Such an outcome is completely unacceptable because we are at an especially fragile point in our history. Good people at even our strongest institutions are working against a rising tide of red ink that will eventually threaten the financial structure of their whole universities. However, the direst financial consequences pale before the specter of the recent revelations about huge sums of cash and organized gambling involvement at one of our most respected academic (and athletically prominent) institutions.

This is not that school's scandal -- it is an indictment of our whole approach to intercollegiate athletics today. If we, the NCAA, are unable or unwilling to accept responsibility for this breakdown, then we will continue to reap what we sow no matter what punishment one school receives.

The problems are systemic and cannot be addressed by punishing individual institutions or personnel or by "tweaking" the current misplaced priorities of our athletics programs. Many of the societal forces buffeting intercollegiate athletics are not under our control, but until we have the courage to address the following, which I think we can control, we guarantee continuing embarrassment and scandals:

The increasing emphasis on a "national" schedule that forces our athletes to miss huge amounts of class time.

The scheduling of conference and NCAA championship events during exam periods and even during the graduation ceremonies for our institutions.

Beginning practice and competition before our athletes attend their first class or meet with a professor.

How can we send a clear message to our athletes, coaches and administrators about our real priorities?

Consider:

* Requiring a full year of residency and a full year of successful academic progress before allowing anyone to represent an institution in competition.

Requiring all sports committees to develop a competition schedule that totally eliminates missed class time.

How realistic are those two reforms? There are 242 days from September 1 to April 30 and about 150 of those days are class and exam days. That leaves a total of 92 days for competition that would not require a single missed class. Television contracts would dictate that some basketball games would continue to be scheduled on class days, but it is possible to schedule nearby teams for those games (or take advantage of game-day aircraft charters) in order to attend all classes. Our Virginia men's basketball teams that were ranked as high as No. 1 in the nation always traveled on the afternoon of class-day games and always returned after the game to eliminate missed class time.

We need clear and consistent action, not just words, to demonstrates to our athletes that classroom performance is our No. 1 priority.

There are a million excuses for not initiating such action, most of them based on short-term impacts on individual programs. Those excuses are seductive, but they must be dismissed because they lead us to the bad paths we have already traveled.

Instead, we should focus on the one reason for a call to action: We owe it to the young people in our charge to make certain that classroom performance is our No. 1 priority.

Terry Holland is athletics director emeritus at the University of Virginia.