NCAA Planning Tougher Standard

Myles Brand, president of the NCAA, discussed academic reform, the status of amateurism in college sports and cost containment in his state of the NCAA speech Saturday.

Under a plan being finalized this weekend by a committee and expected to be approved Monday by the Division I Board of Directors, schools will face scholarship reductions for poor academic performance by teams.

The Division I Committee on Academic Performance hoped to determine the final standards for the program today.

“These measures will change the culture of college sports,” Brand said. “Success as a student as well as an athlete, simply, is the only acceptable standard for the future in college sports.”

The loss of scholarships for failing to reach standards will be capped at 5 or 10%. Based on the lower number, I-A football teams could lose no more than four of its 85 scholarships, and women’s and men’s basketball could lose only one.

With players leaving college for the lure of the money offered in professional sports, some observers contend that because of the big money generated by some football and men’s basketball teams, players should share in the profits.

“I could not be more opposed,” Brand said. “Amateurism is not about how much, it is about why. It is not about the money, it is about the motivation.”

He said the collegiate model of sports is based on the idea that students come to college to get an education. He also believes most of the 360,000 student-athletes “play sports under the banner of the university for the love of the game.”

He also expressed concern about ever-increasing athletic budgets. He warned that similar rates of growth, pushed recently by TV contracts and other “fast-flowing new revenue streams,” are unlikely in the future.