Reform rebirth?

Meeting of college bosses could spawn new watchdog group

Don’t look now, but an old band from the college reform movement is staging a comeback. Several leading players from the now defunct Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics -- sharp guys like Hodding Carter and Bill Friday -- plan to huddle in Washington, D.C., with a dozen or so college presidents Sunday night and Monday. The get-together is set for the stately Willard Hotel, host to every U.S. president since 1853, though probably a bit pricey for most college athletes.

No one from the old Knight Commission will talk about it, but SI.com has learned that something along the lines of a Coalition of Presidents is likely to come out of the meetings. The group would be limited to fewer than 15 members, mostly top administrators from schools that enjoy membership in the major athletic conferences. Presumably, they would convene every few months and issue position papers on relevant issues of the day, such as ghastly low graduation rates, excessive salaries for coaches and the increasing cases of academic fraud.

It’s interesting to catch the reform movement regrouping just as college sports has seemingly gone bonkers. Presidents and coaches mired in academic scandal. Coaches blithely skipping out on contracts. High-profile coaches allegedly liquored up, hustling college coeds and hunkering down with strippers.

Lost in all the muck is the escalating cost of doing business and a quickened rush for the almighty dollar. Before taking over as the new NCAA boss, Myles Brand portrayed college sports as out of control. But at last check, he hadn’t said a peep about the much-debated expansion of the ACC and the conference hopping that's likely to follow, which is all about jacking up TV revenue and positioning for conference championship games.

Several reform leaders met with Brand in Atlanta last month to update him on plans to reconvene what figures be a smaller spin-off of the original Knight Commission. Publicly, he and other college sports officials are supportive of the effort, but you wonder if they aren’t leery of another watchdog group.

“What Brand and these people will never admit, and I have said it to their face, is CBS paying $6 billion for basketball and the other networks for football is not a contribution to higher learning," said Murray Sperber, an Indiana University professor who has authored a trio of books critical of big-time college sports. “This is payment for a product. And the product the schools have to deliver is college football and basketball played at the highest possible level. ... And with that kind of emphasis it is very hard to go to class and take any meaningful courses. There is no way to square that circle, to go that commercial route and have authentic student-athletes."

This is largely the same concern voiced for more than a decade by the Knight Commission, which essentially closed shop shortly after issuing its final report two years ago. A significant recommendation from that report, however, called for the creation of a Coalition of Presidents, financially independent of the conference offices and NCAA, as a “watchdog to maintain pressure for change." Unless someone steps up to foot the bill, it appears funding for the latest effort will come again from the Knight Foundation.

As it was two years ago, the Knight position remains deeply rooted in the belief that active involvement by college presidents is necessary to bring sanity to college sports. That’s why the new group is a veritable presidents-only club. That’s why they see hope in a college president finally leading the NCAA.

If folks at the top can’t control the athletic programs, then who can? The problem is some of these very same presidents have their fingerprints all over the scandals at places like Georgia, Fresno State and St. Bonaventure.

Michael Adams, the Georgia president, is himself a former Knight Commission member and the first signature you see on its final report, "A Call to Action: Reconnecting College Sports and Higher Education." He’s fighting to keep his job after the headlines created by his own athletic program. Privately, former commission members say his bumbling effort isn’t what they had in mind when they called for “presidential involvement."

At Georgia, Adams fired football coach Jim Donnan and cut him a financial settlement that was kept secret from the university’s athletic association. The firing also was against the recommendation of athletic director Vince Dooley, as was the hiring of basketball coach Jim Harrick -- who had been fired earlier by UCLA and would eventually resign under pressure at Georgia. Among the charges at Georgia are that three of Harrick's players received A’s in a basketball class they seldom if ever attended, which was taught by Harrick’s son.

“I happened to see the curriculum and they talk about teaching dribbling," said a member of the former Knight Commission. “That shows you how far it has gone, and the work still to be done."

The guess here is Adams won’t be -- or certainly shouldn’t be -- among the college presidents invited back by the Knight folks to pen strong papers on academic fraud and the like. And while other notable reform groups have come on the scene since the Knight Commission began a decade ago, probably none has been as instrumental in generating public debate on the issues afflicting college sports or has had as direct a pipeline to the presidents. So its revival, even if in a condensed form, is welcome news.

Besides, the more watchdogs the better.

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