Jun 17, 2010 12:36:12 PM

The Knight Commission's latest report, "Restoring the Balance" provides a comprehensive review of the state of intercollegiate athletics and advances positions that the NCAA not only agrees with, but also has taken meaningful steps to advance and implement across the Association. The NCAA is pleased to both support the Knight Commission recommendations and have its support of ongoing NCAA reform initiatives.

The Commission's three focus areas—greater transparency in athletics spending, making academics a priority and ensuring student-athletes are students first and foremost are the cornerstones of a reform movement started by the late NCAA President Myles Brand almost seven years ago.

The NCAA and its member schools are overwhelmingly in concert with the Knight Commission. However, we feel there are some aspects of both the data and solutions advanced that require clarification and debate.

As noted in the report, the NCAA's Dashboard Indicators provide presidents and chancellors a standardized look at their respective financials as compared to their peers. We agree there is a need for greater transparency and we urge the presidents on the Commission to work through their conferences to sponsor legislation to this end for the Division I Board of Directors to consider.

We're also pleased the Knight Commission supports a cornerstone of our academic reform program—APR. We believe APR provides the best real-time assessment of academic performance of sports teams. We also believe that improvement is the goal and that punishment is a result if improvement is not achieved. As simple as it sounds, we don't think establishing a specific post-season penalty trigger of 925 for all teams is fair—especially to those teams that are improving. Our current penalty structure that accounts for improvement is fair and has the desired effect—an emphasis on academic success. We are not, however, resting on our laurels—our academic reform effort, including the penalty structure, features benchmarks and metrics to ensure the focus is on improvement and academic success.

Likewise, we also strongly support treating student-athletes as students first and foremost—not as professionals. As part of that approach, a task force of presidents and chancellors is looking at the proper balance of commercialism with respect to the student-athlete—ensuring that the balance is appropriate and does not exploit the student-athlete in any way.

It's important to keep in mind as a member-led association, proposals that require governance action can be advanced by any member. And as noted earlier, we urge those presidents on the Knight 

Commission to sponsor legislation through their conferences to initiate vetting of all the recommendations.