Myles Brand, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, explains in a talk at URI yesterday how rules can be bent when necessary.

08:27 AM EDT on Wednesday, September 14, 2005

BY KEVIN McNAMARA
Journal Sports Writer

SOUTH KINGSTOWN -- For much of the last half-century, the letters NCAA elicited feelings of dread and doom in the minds of collegiate athletes, coaches and fans. With the heavy hand of Big Brother, college sports' governing body often seemed to hinder, not help, most every situation.

Under president Myles Brand, however, times seem to be changing. Exhibit A is the NCAA's stand on how to handle the student-athletes whose practice fields and stadiums happened to lie in the devastating wake of Hurricane Katrina. Players representing Tulane University, the University of New Orleans and other schools not only can't compete on their campuses but many also lost clothing and other vital possessions in the flooding.

In order to help, Brand has suspended many of the NCAA's strictest rules. For example, the affected student-athletes can accept money from boosters to defray disaster-related expenses. They can also compete even though they're not full-time students since school is canceled for this semester, at a minimum.

As even Brand admits, "This is not the way the NCAA operated in the past. It's not the NCAA you've known and loved."

Brand, the NCAA's chief executive since 2003, spoke last night at the University of Rhode Island's Chafee Social Science Center. His talk, entitled "The State of Intercollegiate Sport" kicked off the school's Honors Colloquium entitled "Contemporary Sport: Healthy Pursuit or Obsession?"

A more student-friendly NCAA is only one focus of Brand's leadership of the NCAA, which is based in Indianapolis. As the former president at the Universities of Oregon and Indiana, Brand knows all about the ills of college sports. Last night, he touched on five key perceptions that surround college sport that he insists "are more myth than reality."

Myth one concerned the emphasis on sports and not on study. Brand said that college athletes in all sports graduate at a higher rate than the student body, but admitted that the rates in the highest profile sports -- football and men's basketball -- trail the overall student body. That's a principle reason why he has helped push a major piece of reform called the Academic Progress Rate, a measurement of each collegiate team's academic performance. Colleges now need to provide the NCAA with data that track the retention and academic performance of student-athletes. Schools that repeatedly fall below the minimum standards will be subject to penalties, including loss of scholarships and forfeiture of NCAA tournament receipts.

Data released for the 2003-04 academic year showed that 6 percent of more than 6,000 teams surveyed now fall below the minimum prescribed standards. Not surprisingly, football and men's basketball were the sports with the most teams that fell below the guidelines.

"Those are shots across the bow, warning shots, really," he said. "We're looking to find out who are the worst of the worst. Who over the long haul fails to graduate students in an appreciable number given the support they have on campus. I'd like to believe there will be few, if any, schools that we have to sanction because they've all heard the shots across the bow and they've changed their behaviors. I don't know if we'll be that lucky."

Myth number two is that college sports are all about winning. Brand, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., says that his hero, Jackie Robinson, proved that "athletes can lead social change," and added that the vast majority of college athletes play for the love of the game. He also cited the popularity of Title IX as an agent of great social change.

Myth three is that college sports are all about money and the athletes are forgotten. Brand said that even schools whose stadiums sit 100,000 football fans on Saturday afternoons struggle to make money and "the average Division I-A athletics program represents only 3 percent to 4 percent of a university's expenditures."

Brand did admit that the ability of athletic departments to cultivate revenues is becoming more challenging and the arms race of schools to build bigger and better athletic facilities is quite problematic.

Myth four is that Brand is the czar of college sports. In fact, the NCAA is run by college presidents and Brand insists that "the real czar of college sports is the will of the membership determined by university presidents."

The final myth was that amateurism is a myth. Brand said he "could not be more opposed" to the notion that football and basketball players should be paid to play. He says that while the focus is often on the select few stars who can move on to the pros, "the vast majority will go pro in something other than athletics."

At the end of his talk, Brand was inducted into URI's International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame by Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch.

The series at URI will continue every Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Barry Marks Auditorium in the Chafee Social Science Center through Nov. 29. Next week's speaker will be lawyer Len Elmore, a former All-American and NBA player, who will speak on "Race and Sport."