I applaud the notion of NCAA President Myles Brand that intercollegiate athletics departments will have to be sensitive to commercialism and the changing nature of opportunities as we move forward.

The dramatic increase in broadcast exposure, particularly in football and basketball but increasingly in other sports, has created the opportunity for both enhancement of the college athletics experience and, I fear, encroachment into areas that have the potential to do great damage to everything that we hold dear about sports on campus.

The pursuit of excellence in intercollegiate athletics is sometimes as much a matter of financial resources as it is putting great coaches together with great athletes. While money alone is not the sole determinant of success, the correlation cannot be ignored, and those institutions that make a full commitment to success in competition are making a concomitant commitment to increased expenditures and, therefore, a need for greater revenue streams.

Additionally, given the rapid change in technology, it is difficult to predict what the sports communication landscape will look like in even five years. We could be watching games on the Internet, on our cell phones or an iPod or similar hand-held device. The proliferation of broadcast outlets may well be an instance of the market getting ahead of the appropriate controls.

Nonprofits of all sorts are seeking legitimate sponsorships. I recently was in the British Museum, and while in that staid and historic institution I strolled through the Weston Great Hall, the Annenberg Reading Room and the Sainsbury Africa Gallery. None of those appellations seemed out of place or inappropriate. Sponsorships such as those and similar sponsorships in athletics venues that enhance the total experience for fans without subjecting a captive audience to overt advertisement are, I believe, an appropriate practice for generating revenue in a manner consistent with the goals of the institution.

The question is not whether decisions will need to be made about commercialism and maximizing available financial resources in collegiate athletics, because in some cases athletics departments are self-supporting and must find the money for their budgets. The question must be what are the guiding principles by which those decisions will be made. Let me suggest three.

• College sports should look like a collegiate enterprise. At the venue itself, there should be a limited number of commercial intrusions. Fans should not be bombarded with ads between plays, between innings and during timeouts; a University of Georgia game is a different experience than an NBA game, and I want that difference to be clear. We have been very conservative about the number of corporate sponsors whose names are displayed on the electronic screens in our venues. Each campus must make its own decisions, but I don’t think any of us want our uniforms to look like South American soccer jerseys or NASCAR drivers’ suits. The standard is a clear distinction between a for-profit enterprise and a nonprofit activity that supports the mission of the academic institution.
• We should acknowledge that there are limits on what products are appropriately advertised in the context of a college or university activity. Each institution must set its own rules for making those decisions subject to commonly held moral, ethical and decency considerations. At the University of Georgia, for instance, we allow no advertising in any of our venues for tobacco or alcohol products, and consistent with Southeastern Conference policy, we limit alcohol ads on our radio network to 60 seconds per hour. Clearly there are other products that either offend the senses or are outside the bounds of what should be associated with young people.
• I feel strongly that we should not exploit student-athletes to sell or endorse products or services, either explicitly or implicitly. This is a dangerous line that all of us would do well not to cross. Student-athletes are amateurs, not professionals. Their images, numbers and representations should not be used for commercial purposes while they are still in school; decisions they make after their eligibility has expired are theirs to make, but institutions should not ask 19-year-olds to endorse products that they may not use or in which they may not believe, including wholesome, legitimate products and services that may be a part of institutional, conference or NCAA cooperative relationships.

“Commercialism” is a loaded word that generally means what the speaker intends it to mean and is often used negatively about someone else’s actions. The combined forces of the need for more money and the rapid increase in technologies for broadcast distribution create the potential for the decision-making process to be driven by the wrong factors. Opportunities for increased commercialism should be viewed as opportunities to support a clearly defined mission for both the athletics department and the institution.

As long as decisions are being made based on those criteria rather than the bottom line, the outcomes will be good.

Michael F. Adams is president of the University of Georgia.