NCAA President Myles Brand was right on point when he said in his editorial in the August 30 issue of The NCAA News that "value-based budgeting" must be judged on whether it helps fulfill the institution's academic mission.

In 1906, in the educational journal called School Review, Luther Halsey Gulick, the first athletics director for New York public schools, said in support of high schools encompassing student-run athletics: "Only a small fraction of the students of a school can actually engage in an interschool athletic contest, and yet the spirit of athletics, the loyalty to the school, the morality shown, and the social conscience developed includes in its grasp all the students of the school fully as much as it does those that actually compete. ... It is the function of school athletics, when rightly conducted, to convert this gang instinct from evil to righteousness; to make its product social righteousness, rather than social unrighteousness. ... Here is the one opportunity for corporate or social morality. The importance of this altogether transcends the importance of athletics as such."

Gulick -- who started the Boy Scouts, the Campfire Girls and gave one of his faculty at the YMCA Training School (now Springfield College), James Naismith, instructions to create an indoor game that could be played in the winter -- was convinced that "the strength of 'the new athletics,' or the new interpretation of the old athletics, lies in viewing them as social and moral agencies, as means for the creation of corporate sensitiveness and genuine institutional honor." His view changed society as high schools across the country incorporated school sports as a way of teaching teamwork, self-sacrifice and the subordination of the individual to the greater good, a concept not yet grasped in a nation built on the rugged individualism of the American pioneer.

Our societal needs are different than a century ago. Today, we combat low self-worth and negativism in our society, which can lead to drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, violence of every variety and discrimination. Just as Gulick was wildly successful in having Americans understand the team concept, we can create our own success by using sports to show that athletics, or any subject, at its highest level is more easily attainable when we have feelings of high personal worth as a whole person. Can our universities have a higher calling than that?

"Value-based budgeting" must place emphasis on what students learn. The games, equipment, uniforms and all other costs must be subordinated to the essence of what we teach. If we really want to fulfill the aspirations of Gulick and President Brand, we must think of what we are teaching students. Is it educational? Is it presented in an educational way? Is it presented so that all students learn the same things? Is the subject matter of what we teach as important as other academic departments?

How can any of these questions be answered in the affirmative if we don't write down what we specifically want to teach and learn? We have no curriculum. We have no text for the student to read, study and practice. How can we hope to get our full share of the budget when we have nothing concrete to show the university except a win-loss record?

President Brand says correctly that the structure of what we do is not as important as the "mission of integration itself" of athletics into academic life. Here is our mission then, if we want to be the leaders he called for us to be:

• Write down a curriculum for all coaches to follow, thereby changing the model of sports teams.

• Write down a text for students to read and be tested on, thereby making sports a true learning experience.

• Base the curriculum and text on the science that studies performance: sport psychology.

• Make sure that coaches are teaching and student-athletes are practicing the mental skills that show them how to perform at their very best, in or out of sport.

• Budget subject matter first, not last.

• Establish benchmarks for learning mind-body skills such as creating a positive environment in which people learn faster and perform better, replacing harmful thoughts with helpful ones, giving maximum effort, goal-setting, visualizing and paying attention to details.

If our athletics department had students practicing how to think to be successful, how to be self-motivated, and how to build our self-worth -- because those three things are a precursor to achievement and self-fulfillment -- athletics would stand tall on any academic playing field.

Your coaches will say they teach these skills, but they don't with the consistency of an educationally administered program. Student-athletes cannot list the mental skills they are practicing. Most cannot explain how visualization works. Student-athletes do not know, as part of a science, that thought influences performance. Student-athletes do not know that intrinsic motivation is more long-lasting than external motivation, whether it's a pat on the back or a kick in the butt.

Gulick said 100 years ago that "there are few forces that can act more potently toward the making of moral fiber than can athletics. ... It may be a clean, moral life (carrying the high ideals of a social conscience) or the reverse -- all depending upon the conduct of these athletics." I heard Gulick's voice when I read President Brand's editorial. It is in "the conduct of these athletics" where we have lost our way. We can make it right.

President Brand set the record straight when he wrote that the key to success in athletics and elsewhere has always been leadership. A leader will change the subject matter of athletics to find 21st century solutions to 21st century problems.

Mitch Lyons is an assistant men's basketball coach at Lasell College. He also is the president of GetPsychedSports.org, Inc., which is dedicated to changing the subject matter of youth and school sports teams to remedy societal issues involving low self-worth and negativism.