Panelists Discuss Challenges Facing College Athletics
Street & Smith's Conference Group's 6th Annual Intercollegiate Athletics Forum kicked-off this morning a the InterContinental, The Barcaly, in N.Y. with a session titled, "The State of Intercollegiate Athletics: A Culture in Flux." Panelists included NCAA President Myles Brand, Univ. of Central Florida Institute for Diversity & Ethics in Sport Director Richard Lapchick, Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics co-Chair and Univ. of Oregon professor Nathan Tublitz, Clemson University President James Barker and University of Notre Dame AD Kevin White. Following are highlights from the discussion.

The Issue: What are the biggest challenges facing intercollegiate athletics today?
The Skinny: Brand: "Only six of our institutions are self-sustaining in terms of making money on athletics. The rest are subsidized to some degree. The tension between academic needs and athletic needs is a great source of tension, and it's a quiet crisis on campuses."
Barker: "There's no question graduation rates have to improve. As your standards get higher and higher, if your standards to admit athletes don't go up as well, that creates tension."
Tublitz: "The problem is that academics and athletics are divergent, but we still have to think of the two together because they're part of the same enterprise."
Lapchick: "We still need to work harder to hire Aftican-American coaches. Today we have five D-1[football] coaches who are African-American, less than the eight we had a decade ago. The process simply isn't working today. We're an overwhelmingly white male group."

The Issue: Do pressures to win affect spending decisions?
The Skinny: White: "Intercollegiate athletics represent four to five percent of spending across the enterprise at universities, and I suspect there are excesses all across these institutions. Intercollegiate athletics have been used as a marketing medium, and upward mobility has caused a lot of the tensions we've talked about."
Brand: "Four or five percent sounds like money on the margins, but putting it into a stadium instead of science labs makes a difference. When we're talking four or five percent of billions of dollars, that money makes a huge difference wherever it goes."
Tublitz: "The temptation to cut corners isn't unique to sports. I can cut corners too -- I could plagiarize, and people do that. But we still need standards and integrity, because we need to balance the needs of the entire university."

The Issue: What issues do you face with sponsorship?
The Skinny: Brand: "Our corporate sponsors want to associate with our institutions and our student-athletes. Our challenge is to find ways to do this, but not allow our athletes to be exploited."
Barker: "Commercialization has gone on for a long time. We need to keep thinking about what this means, because it's a moving landscape that even goes to the naming of non-athletic buildings on campus. Do you name a building after a great biologist or after the donor who gave you $16.5 million?"
Tublitz: "The spending decisions at universities are the same kinds of decisions families make. Do you buy a new BMW or do you fix the roof? There are push back and balance issues, and what you do at one end of the university affects the whole."
Greatest Hit: "Twelve million people watched our Labor Day game against Florida State, and that was an opportunity to tell 12 million people about our school. Do you have any idea how long it would take to tell 12 million people about our math department?" -- Barker.

Univ. of Memphis Coach John Calipari Discusses APR, China at IAF
Univ. of Memphis men's basketball coach John Calipari sat down for a One-On-One at Street & Smith's Conference Group's 6th Annual Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, where he discussed APR, the school's dealings in China and the demands placed on players.

Q: There's been a lot of discussion today about APR, the pressures and opportunities, but also about what it has meant to college coaches. What's your take on it?
Calipari: The basis behind the APR is good. We have graduated 15 of our last 19 players at the Univ. of Memphis. And when we were at UMass, we graduated over 80% of our players there. So, obviously we have a blueprint for academic success. The main thing is, [the players have] got to know that it is important to you as a coach that they take care of business. If you don't care about weight training as a coach, your team is going to be physically weak. If you don't care about what they do in school, if you never check up, they're not going to care either.

But the issues with the APR for me are basically that there's not parity among all of our schools. Where they say, "Well, we're all trying to be held to same standards." I'll give you an example: The first time a private school goes below the APR, I want to see who that is. In most cases, it's going to be public schools, it's going to be historically black schools, it's going to be public schools with great diversity that are not going to make these APR standards.

Q: Why?
Calipari: Most of it comes back to money. We're holding all these schools to the same standard, but here's the problem: Stanford -- I love that institution and what it stands for, but they have $450M endowment for athletics. $450M for athletics! I don't know about the other colleges that are here, but you're looking at you university, and they don't have a $450M endowment. Some schools have very little. They have discretionary funds. So, what happens at the historically black schools, the way you get the APR, you pay for summer school, both sessions. All their athletes go to summer school. But we can't afford to do that. They have to come back for a fifth year. But we can't afford to do that. You need tutors. They need to travel with you. They need to meet with these kids one-to-one. We don't have the money to do that. Our school has made a great commitment to go back and reach out to students who finished their eligibility four, five, six years ago and pay for their education. They couldn't afford to come themselves, but we're paying for them to come back, which is part of the reason we're meeting the APR.

My suggestion is: Standard give $100M of that endowment to the rest of us to pay for some of this stuff. To bring parity about what we're trying to deal with here. There's not parity. Our graduation rate at our university is 17% after four years. Our basketball program is over 70%. That doesn't seem right, does it?"

Q: What do you think is the general consensus among college basketball coaches?
Calipari: I think if you raise standards, people will meet them. That's not the issue. It's that we're trying to raise the standards the same for everybody and we're not all the same. ...Some of this should fall right on the presidents. The presidents should make a stand and have the courage to say this is how we're going to do it here and here's what we're going to do.

Obviously I am for raising standards. My frame of reference, I'm the first college educated in my family. My grandparents came through Ellis Island. My parents are not college educated. So, I'm looking at it in a different light than maybe someone who came from a private school whose parents were doctors and lawyers. I've worked at two institutions where the majority of the students were the first educated in their families. It's a heck of a thing for us as coaches and administrators to bring on a kid and see a kid who maybe didn't have hope in his eyes to all of a sudden have hope and break a cycle from south Memphis. And south Memphis is the poorest zip code in America. Now the vision for his own children is to graduate from college. And their children, maybe they become doctors.

Q: How involved is the faculty today in the day-to-day role of your athletes?
Calipari: Very active. But I think we all stay at a distance. I've never talked to a faculty member in all my years about any issue with a student. I'm never going to put myself in a position where I'm pressuring a faculty member. But we have people in our building and that's their job: academics. [AD] R.C. Johnson and [President] Dr. [Shirley] Raines made a decision that we're not handling this right. We need to get better. We need to invest more money. We need to get more tutors. We need to travel a way that [the players] miss less class. We had a 0% graduation rate, folks, seven years ago. Zero. The school made the commitment -- not me -- that they were going to invest in our student athletes to give them a chance. Instead of feeling like we used them, we're giving them hope and a chance. That's what they did. My job is to hold the kids accountable and let them know it's important to me.

Q: One of the first things you did when you got to Memphis was to strike up a relationship with FedEx. What has been the benefit of that?
Calipari: I don't know if anyone here knows [FedEx Chair, President and CEO Fred] Smith. If you get with him, you've got about four minutes to say what you have to say. I said I have one question: "Summer jobs for my players?" He said they had an intern program. Had them hooked up. That's what FedEx has done. Our university has tapped into the finances of FedEx and their leadership. But for our basketball program, it was about internships. They were six to twelve weeks. Every one of our players could take advantage of them. Not everyone has. They were held accountable. If they were late, they were docked. If they were late two times, they were fired. Some of them took advantage. One is working in Washington, DC, in management. It was an unbelievable opportunity for us to build [the players'] resumes in a Fortune 500 company. They worked for a manager and they were interns. They weren't lifting boxes and digging ditches to make money for the summer. They worked in a field, whether it was marketing, management or whatever field they wanted to be in, and could learn about business.

Q: With Fred Smith, he was one of the first people you went to who had the idea about something with China, correct?
Calipari: They'd been in China 20 years. [The history behind that was] I was reading a New York Times article by William Rhoden about China basketball and the NBA. He [wrote] about 1,000 7-footers China -- that got me to read on -- and 1.3 billion people. Their TV is watched by 300-400 million people. So then my thought was, I wonder if we can connect somehow in this. I called Mr. Smith and he said one word: "brilliant." He said whatever you need from me, I'll help you. I said what if we did something with their coaches first and just build a relationship, and he said that's exactly what you should do. Del Harris, a good friend of mine, had coached the Chinese national team in the last Olympics. He got me together with the right people. In October, we had 15 coaches from China come over. They stayed ten days. They watched our scrimmages. We had interpreters. One of the has stayed with us as an intern. Our basketball team is going to go to China in May to play their national team on TV. Again, 3 or 4 million Chinese watch that. We're going to play three games. That will be against Yao Ming -- I'm hoping he doesn't play.

The other thing that happened through this is we met with people over there. C.J. Liu is a graduate who's one of the biggest businessmen in Beijing. He committed to our provost 100 undergraduate Chinese students a year to our schools. And as I sat here and listened, I said, with all due respect, you guys are getting 400 students before I'm getting to think about getting a player. I'm not sure this is what I want. We all laughed. But 400 Chinese students over four years doubled the Univ. of Memphis population for foreign students. Now, maybe we start drawing Asian-American students, and it makes us a different university. They talked about us having a sister city. We talked about trying to get some of our games on, talked to ESPN. Will you give me the right to give our Georgetown game to CCTV in China? They've never had a college game on national TV in China. They've never had a college game in China. They've never even thought about the NCAA tournament. This wouldn't be just for us. It would be for all universities. If we get this done -- and the NCAA is working with us -- I really think this is going to be big for our city, our school, but also all the NCAA. For all of us, it's a great opportunity to get the Chinese connected with us and learn about the western world.

Q: What was the one thing you took away from doing business with China?
Calipari: They're probably more capitalistic than we are. They're just like us. They'll build a building in one-third the time. They showed us the temporary housing they built for the workers. So, you work there. You eat, you sleep, you work. And that's how they do it. It's so fast. Over there, everything seems to be at 100 miles an hour. I'm just excited for our university. Say we're lucky enough to get a Chinese basketball player who can play. Our program would be big in L.A., San Francisco, Seattle. When Yao Ming played Yi [Jianlian] on TV, how many people watched that game in China? I think it was 220 million. And it wasn't even carried on ESPN here. So, the opportunities for our university...and if everybody else wants to piggyback on, I'm fine with that. But it's about our program, our university, our city.

I'll throw one other thing at you: sponsorships. This hit me for my players. If they are the first junior players that the Chinese players know, sponsorship opportunities for them are unbelieveable. The opportunities to play in their professional basketball league, they have greater value because the Chinese people would know them. Shane Battier: pretty good basketball player. He signed a $1.5M-a-year shoe contract in China with a shoe that will not be worn here in the United States. Shane Battier? He also gets 1% of sales. Shane Battier! Why? Because he plays with Yao Ming. He plays on the same team with Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady, and they're under contract and he's not, so they snatch him. I don't even know what we have. We're all trying to figure it out. But I do know this: If the NCAA works with us and helps us bring over some of these players -- and it may not happen this year or next year -- over a period of time, we set standards for them to come over, you'll have 50-100 Chinese players playing in the United States. It will open up another market to the universities, in my opinion.

Q: What about the demands on players today: Are they too much?
Calipari: There are a lot of demands, but schools are investing more in these young people than they've ever invested. We've made a decision to charter filghts. So, yeah, we're demanding. But we charter so they they're not missing that much class. They're getting back at a reasonable hour. We're investing more and more in these young people. You say, we're asking a lot of these players? We've got 18-year-olds going to Iraq right now. Yeah, we're asking a lot, but we're playing ball. Last night, my team was scared. At halftime I walked in and saide, I don't know what to tell you. What are you scared of? It's December and if we lose, it doesn't matter. We do ask a lot but I think we give a lot. In this sport, we're here to serve them. They're not here to serve us. We're here to make their lives better. We're here to create an opportunity for them, all of us in athletics. That's what our job is.

Street & Smith's Intercollegiate Athletics Forum Continues
Street & Smith's Conference Group's 6th Annual Intercollegiate Athletics Forum continues today at InterContinental, The Barclay, in N.Y. The opening session, titled "The Future of College Sports Television: The Cost/Benefit of Having More Options," includes CBS Sports Senior VP/Programming Mike Aresco, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, ABC/ESPN Exec VP/Collegiate Sports Chuck Gerber, CSTV Exec VP/Content Tim Pernetti and Mountain West Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson.
A panel yesterday afternoon, titled "Sports Media Perspective: Today's Positioning of Intercollegiate Athletics," included CBS college football analyst Gary Danielson, CSTV college basketball analyst Pete Gillen and ESPN college football analyst Jesse Palmer.

The Issue: How do you assess intercollegiate athletics today?
The Skinny: Gillen: "There's unbelievable interest, excitement, coverage. There are some problems but I think it's in good shape."
Danielson: "There's a lot of pressure to produce ratings. ... The biggest fear I have is will it continue to push to the top where people are only happy with Texas, Ohio State, Tennessee, Florida. Will it become just an 'NFL Lite?'"
Palmer: "There's so many fans pushing things so much more than in the past."

Greatest Hit:
"I haven't had a check bounce in a long time so I'm pretty happy about it." - Danielson.

Another panel, titled "Athletic Directors: The Changing Face of Competition," included Tennessee Women's AD Joan Cronan, Connecticut AD Jeff Hathaway, Memphis AD R.C. Johnson, Louisville AD Tom Jurich and South Florida AD Doug Woolard.

The Issue: What is important in beginning and maintaining a relationship with a coach, and what do you look for when you're hiring a new coach?
The Skinny: Johnson: "Most people I interview can coach, so I ask myself wheter I'd want my son or daughter playing for the candidate."
Jurich: "The number one thing I always look for is passion. I look at all my coaching hires as a partnership, too."
Cronan: "The most important job we do as athletic directors is hire coaches and take care of coaches. Our job is to make their job and the experience of the athletes the best it can be, and those two are related."
Hathaway: "When you're winning, everyone's up front with you, but I tell our coaches that when the stuff's hitting the fan, I'll still be there and be up front."

Also yesterday afternoon, Memphis men’s basketball coach John Calipari was asked in a one-on-one interview about what APR has meant to college coaches.  Calipari: “The basis behind the APR is good. … The main thing is, [the players have] got to know that it is important to you as a coach that they take care of business. If you don’t care about weight training as a coach, your team is going to be physically weak. If you don’t care about what they do in school, if you never check up, they’re not going to care either."\

College Sports TV Coverage, APR Rates Highlight IAF Day One

Street & Smith’s Conference Group’s 6th Annual Intercollegiate Athletics Forum continued this morning at The Intercontinental, The Barclay, in N.Y. with a session titled, “The Future of College Sports on Television: The Cost/Benefit of Having More Options." Panelists included CBS Sports Senior VP/Programming Mike Aresco, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, ABC/ESPN Exec VP/Collegiate Sports Chuck Gerber, CSTV Exec VP/Content Tim Pernetti and Mountain West Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson. Following are highlights from the discussion.

The Issue: How might you have changed your tack in launching a new channel?
The Skinny: Delany: "[In hindsight] I would have been more patient than less patient.
I would have made it less personal. Early on I got involved in some discussions when I shouldn't have gotten involved."
Thompson: "If I had a do-over I would not have come out as aggressively and would have been a little more patient. It's not personal. It's a business for all concern. Our position is that once we get satellite it will open up some other avenues for us."
The Issue: Should conferences go to the network model like the Big Ten and Mountain West?
The Skinny: Gerber: "The argument we make is, between two major networks and ESPNU, [it] becomes an entity to form a complete circle. I could make a very compelling argument to Jim that he shouldn't have started a Big Ten channel because we could have provided all he needed in a more traditional way. I will say the same thing to [SEC Commissioner Mike] Slive."
Delany: "I'm very happy with the relationship we had (with ESPN) and its been there for 30 years. I don't think a conference network is the right thing for all conferences. It might not be the right thing for our conference. That chapter has yet to be written. But you have to look at it and say having multiple partners is the right thing."
Aresco: "Doesn't regional, [over-the-air] syndication have to be strong? Because of the nature of the SEC and that conference, they will have a very difficult discussion for that reason."
Pernetti: "What Mike [Slive] needs to determine is how important it is vis-à-vis the local syndication program? The thing that irks me is that every day you read some announcement about how a new network is going to be launched. People seem to think there's some book you can buy at Barnes & Noble, 'Launching a Network for Dummies.' There's not. There are a lot of challenges to it.
Thompson: "We own all institutional rights and if you don't have that, go on to some other topic."
Greatest Hit: "Having your own network gives you flexibility that you can't have with another network, even if that's ESPN" -- Delany.
The Issue: What is the state of college basketball on TV?
The Skinny: Gerber: "The tournament in basketball has become so big, so huge that no one, quite frankly, cares about regular season."
Delany: "That's true."
Aresco: "I don't think so. If you suddenly didn't have regular season basketball, there would be a huge void. Jim has 26 appearances on CBS. I would think that's still valuable."
Greatest Hit: "There's interest in it because college athletics is the most passionate fanbase that you have. But you can't deny that the passion for college basketball has been diminished by this mammoth called the tournament" -- Gerber.
The Issue: Will there be a playoff system for college football?
The Skinny: Pernetti: "I was at ABC when we created the BCS and we wanted to create a system that would make every game vitally important. We accomplished that goal. It's a good step in the right direction but it's not the end by a long shot."
Gerber: "In five years, you'll have a 1-4, 2-3 game lead up to a championship game."
Aresco: "I don't see an eight-team or 16-team playoff in the long term future. A four-team quasi-playoff using two bowls and a championship game is feasible."
Delany: "In a five year window, I don't see much change. But I think status quo will prevail five years from now."

Here are some highlights from yesterday's afternoon sessions.

The Panel: Sports Media Perspective: Today’s Positioning of Intercollegiate Athletics.
The Panelists: CBS college football analyst Gary Danielson, CSTV college basketball analyst Pete Gillen, ESPN college football analyst Jesse Palmer.
The Issue: How do you assess intercollegiate athletics today?
The Skinny: Gillen: “There’s unbelievable interest, excitement, coverage. There are some problems but I think it’s in good shape.”
Danielson: “There’s a lot of pressure to produce ratings. … The biggest fear I have is will it continue to push to the top where people are only happy with Texas, Ohio State, Tennessee, Florida. Will it become just an NFL lite?”
Palmer: “There’s so many fans pushing things so much more than in the past.”
Greatest Hit: “I haven’t had a check bounce in a long time so I’m pretty happy about it” -- Danielson.
The Issue: What are the problems?
The Skinny: Gillen: “Coaches are making tons of money. $3M. $2M. … Any time you have tons of money, you’re going to have problems and greed. There’s also some academic credibility, … which is something that has to be look at carefully.”
Palmer: “Fans are more concerned with the product on the field, on the court. … When we hear about a player being ineligible, and it’s, ‘Oh, how could that be?’ … In general, fans treat collegiate athletes like professional athletes. It’s about stats and wins and losses. There isn’t enough care or concern.”
Danielson: “The reason this game works is fans love the product. They look back to when they were in college … the university, the helmets, the band, the girls were all pretty. Now you go back to college and it looks all the same. College sports work. They like this segment because of the academics.”
Greatest Hit: “The [SIDs] tried to make light of SEC All-Academic and All-Academic-Americans. … Sadly, I don’t think that stuff gets across enough” -- Palmer.
The Issue: One of the complaints is that there’s too much focus on entertainment and not enough on the sports. How do you all feel about that?
The Skinny: Gillen: “In my opinion there’s too much of the shtick. … Most fans in my humble opinion want to see what’s going on. Have some stories but don’t get too technical.”
Palmer: “For me, if they just talked about Xs and Os all the time I’d be happy. I’d love to know how to beat a 4-4-2. … If West Virginia is beating Rutgers by 40 points in the fourth quarter and you’re’ talking about a three-yard dive play, people are changing the channel. … There are moments in a game when you have to talk about the entertainment or peripheral stuff or you’ll lose viewers.”
Danielson: “You have to embrace modern technology. We have things right now that you don’t like to do but you have to do.”
Palmer: “More than anything, what I’ve been told is to dumb it down. Not to get too into Xs and Os, cover two -- they try to tell you to dumb it down.”

The Panel: Athletic Directors: The Changing Face of Competition.
The Panelists: Univ. of Tennessee Women’s AD Joan Cronan, Univ. of Connecticut AD Jeff Hathaway, Univ. of Memphis AD R.C. Johnson, Univ. of Louisville AD Tom Jurich, Univ. of South Florida AD Doug Woolard.
The Issue: What is important in beginning and maintaining a relationship with a coach, and what do you look for when you’re hiring a new coach?
The Skinny: Johnson: “Most people I interview can coach, so I ask myself whether I’d want my son or daughter playing for the candidate.”
Jurich: “The number one thing I always look for is passion. I look at all my coaching hires as a partnership, too.”
Cronan: “The most important job we do as athletic directors is hire coaches and take care of coaches. Our job is to make their job and the experience of the athletes the best it can be, and those two are related.”
Hathaway: “When you’re winning, everyone’s up front with you, but I tell our coaches that when the stuff’s hitting the fan, I’ll still be there and be up front.”
The Issue: How do you conduct contract negotiations with your coaches as salaries rise?
The Skinny: Jurich: “I’ve always chosen not to deal with agents. I prefer having a coach look me in the eye and tell me what he wants and why he wants it. For me, it’s part of the relationship-building process.”
Woolard: “There’s only so much you can do that’ll make sense economically. We try to get an agreement on the business points before we get agents involved.”
The Issue: How does fundraising for athletics fit into the university’s broader fundraising goals, and how do you fit into those efforts?
The Skinny: Hathaway: “All my presentations start with: give to whichever part of the university you have a passion for. We all try to help each other as much as possible, and if we’re pitching to someone and he wants to give to another part of the school, we have a smooth handoff.”
Woolard: “We have to work together. Without prospect management, you can’t maximize your results.”
The Issue: What are some keys to success as an AD, both long- and short-term?
The Skinny: Johnson: “I always monitor our student ticket sales. I’m worried that students have so many options and opportunities today that 10-15 years from now, those kids who aren’t coming to games, we may not be able to keep them committed.”
Woolard: “I should be held accountable for providing the student-athlete all I can both academically and athletically. We have to be able to put the best people in place to make that partnership work.”
Greatest Hit: “I think of athletics as the university’s front porch. It’s not the most important part of the house, but it's the part everyone sees" -- Cronan.

The Panel: Academic Reform: What happens now and how will it impact the athletic end-product?
The Panelists: NCAA VP/Membership Services Kevin Lennon, Middle Tennessee State Univ. President Sidney McPhee, Notre Dame men’s basketball coach Mike Brey, Kansas State Univ. Associate AD/Student Services Phil Hughes, Univ. of Michigan Dir of Programs for Educational Opportunity Percy Bates, Univ. of Maryland AD Deborah Yow.
The Issue: Where is the process in terms of penalties regarding academic reforms?
The Skinny: Lennon: “This is the year we will have teams subject to penalties in the historic phase. I think that’s a wake up call. They have four years of an academic track record where you can say, ‘You just haven’t got it together.’ And next season is where you can see the postseason penalties (loss of ability to play in the postseason).”
Brey: “We lost a young man in the spring, but it’s not going to hurt our numbers, which are very strong. … There’s a lot of concern, but we as a membership, coaches understand we do have to do better in this area and want to do better in this area.”
McPhee: “There’s certainly not (pushback on this) from the presidents. … There’s no question we need to stay the course.”
Yow: “There are two areas that can be improved, the loss of a retention from if you transfer in good standing. … Those of us who have been athletes and those of us who have been coaches know that if you’re not starting, you’re gone because you want to be starting. Yes, there could be the runoff factor but I believe that’s vastly overrated in the transfer factor. I’d like to see that go away. … I also think its challenging when you lose a retention point after you’ve already graduated.”
Bates: “Let’s not shift away. Let’s not tweak. Let’s start out saying, if we don’t have 925, let’s try to get there. Let’s not try to change the structure of APR.”
Hughes: “One of the better parts of the APR is the retention component. It simply means that … all the stakeholders have a consideration of how the student athlete fits into a program and fits onto a that campus. It makes institutions focus more on how they can connect that student athlete to the campus and the institution.”

The Issue: How have schools made improvements on their APR?
The Skinny: Yow: “The APR is going to address and continues to address the academic profile of recruits. … All coaches, including mine, are looking at this in a different way and that’s a good thing.”
McPhee: “I told my new AD his number one goal -- we want you to win -- was to turn the academic situation around. … We went out and got the best head of academic services out there, a young man from LSU. Then I also made it requirement that quarterly reports be done and sent directly to the president. Finally, I made it clear to coaches we would fire you for the performance of student athletes.”
Hughes: “I tell people, go into campus and find those tutors … find the peer tutors, don’t necessarily spend resources.”
Bates: “When a student athlete comes into our institution, it’s clear we’ve invited them because they’re outstanding athletes but we have a responsibility to provide the best education possible. That’s part of the contract. The system we have now is pushing us to do a better job with that side of the ledger.”
Brey: “Even with the tweaks and the adjustments. we’re better. Dr. Brand, I think you’d agree, you have a very motivated men’s basketball coaching unit. Some of them are pissed (laughter) but just like with players, sometimes that’s the button you have to push.”
Greatest Hit: “I never thought I’d live to see the day where academic centers were part of the arms race” -- Hughes.
The Issue: Where do we go from here with all of this?
The Skinny: Hughes: “The grind on these youngsters is startling. As we go past academic reform, and we now have standards, assessment and measurement, I look at how we can better protect the student athletes themselves.”
Bates: “It’s my plea to say, let’s keep moving forward with what we have. We’re making progress. I don’t mean stay the course at all costs. At some end point, we need to decide if we’ve accomplished what we wanted to.”
Brey: “Men’s basketball coaches are very educated and motivated right now. Keep pushing.”
McPhee: “The NCAA needs to continue to push in that direction. Stick to the guns and we’ll see the kind of results we’ve wanted for years.”
Lennon: “We need to speak with one voice.”
Yow: “We need to stay from what I call a false sense of responsibility for whether or not they graduate. … At some point in time, they need to take advantage as student athletes of all the resources that are available to them.”
Greatest Hit: “This doesn’t address one of those root issues. …We play too many games. It’s insane now. … Given the academic profiles in the revenue sports, they’re gone way too much” – Yow.