Skyrocketing Costs a Concern to NCAA

NCAA President Myles Brand has been a reformer from the start. Now he is taking on perhaps his biggest challenge: containing costs.

After two years at the NCAA’s helm, Brand has put most of his academic agenda in motion. He has focused on making schools more accountable for graduation rates, for keeping student-athletes eligible, for making sure they admit students who can be successful in college classes.

Bringing costs under control won’t be easy.

“What’s happened these last six or eight years is that the rate of expenditures is increasing more quickly in athletics than in other parts of the university,” he told Associated Press in a recent interview. “It needs to resemble the rest of the university.”

Brand insists he is not out to slash athletic department budgets. And he can’t legislate change because antitrust laws don’t allow the NCAA to regulate how universities spend their money. The organization learned that the hard way in 1998 when it lost $54.5 million in a lawsuit involving entry-level assistant coaches, whose salaries were capped by the NCAA at $16,000 annually.

Instead, success will hinge on changing the hearts and minds of college administrators -- something Brand will attempt when the NCAA convention opens today in suburban Dallas.

Among other issues to be discussed this weekend is the future of the bowl championship series. BCS officials are considering using a selection committee, as the NCAA does for its basketball tournaments, to choose teams for bowl games. NCAA officials have long said they have no control over that process.

But the more pressing issue to Brand is the escalating cost of college sports.

Brand expects to meet with about two dozen college presidents during the next few days and will discuss his ideas in Saturday’s state of the organization speech. Among his points: athletics costs are increasing at twice the rate of average university expenses, and winning does not significantly increase donations or revenue.

Those findings sparked some disagreement when they were presented at the Knight Commission meeting in October.

“I don’t think you have an increase on the academic side,” Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway, who is chairman of the NCAA’s board of directors, said then. “But my experience is you do get an increase in donations in athletics when your teams do well.”

Hemenway’s words don’t bother Brand, who is accustomed to challenges.

After the NCAA increased the number of required core courses for incoming freshmen from 13 to 14, Brand advocated another increase to 16. The proposal was approved in 2003 and takes effect in 2008.

Brand also supported raising the number of hours toward graduation that student-athletes are required to complete to remain eligible. That measure also passed.

Brand has supported a proposal from football coaches that would allow players to compete for five years. Current rules allow them to complete four years in a five-year period.

Brand said statistics showed most students at publicly funded schools need nearly five years to graduate.

He also has promoted efforts to hire more minority coaches and athletic administrators.

Brand now will turn his attention to reducing expenses.

“I’ve been taken aback by how strongly the athletic directors felt that it was the right thing to do,” Brand said. “They feel they’ve really been squeezed and understand the difficulty in raising revenue and being pushed by different constituencies to continue increasing the rate of expenditures.”