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"NCAA Sees Myles of Progress" USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2005-01-24-myles-progress_x.htm

NCAA sees Myles of progress
By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY
INDIANAPOLIS — There's no erasing that extraordinary day four Septembers ago when Myles Brand finally got his fill of one of college basketball's most famous but too often boorish coaches.
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</TD><TD class=sidebar vAlign=top width=75>Even Myles Brand's skeptics have commended the steps he's taken in his two years as NCAA president.</TD><TD rowSpan=2>
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He'll forever be the guy who fired Bob Knight.

Knight, of course, moved on from Indiana University to Texas Tech, where he continues to win and throw an occasional public fit. Brand moved, too. The former Indiana president became president of the NCAA two years ago this month, taking a job notoriously lacking in power and perhaps even influence — and by most assessments, he has beefed it up.

He has made it more consequential. Certainly, he has made it more visible.

Brand has been outspoken. He has successfully thrown his weight behind movements that produced recruiting reforms and unprecedented penalties for teams' academic deficiencies and has launched an ambitious campaign to get schools to rethink the way they throw money at sports.

Maybe his national identity began with Knight. But at 62, Brand is seeing that it doesn't end there.

"Myles has been so effective," says Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway, who heads the NCAA's top rules-making body, the Division I board of directors, "that to some extent we kind of forget about where we were two or three years ago. The president of the NCAA was fighting with (increasingly powerful conference) commissioners, saying they threatened the viability of the organization. The membership was sort of floundering, saying, 'How are we going to respond to various scandals, how do we keep on top of these things?' Myles, I think, has been a voice of clear and present reason in the midst of all that turmoil.

"I'd hesitate to tell you if he was doing a lousy job. But I'll be honest. I think it's kind of been a virtuoso performance."

Not all on board

Brand still isn't universally embraced by those in the athletic trenches — athletics directors and commissioners who question a lifelong scholar's understanding of sport and the business of sport. Faculty members belonging to the watchdog Drake Group are unconvinced that he'll deliver the overhaul of college athletics they seek.

David Ridpath, an assistant professor of sports administration at Mississippi State and associate director of the Drake Group, cites Brand's recent praise of Ohio State for moving control of athletes' academic advisement to the provost's office. "Yet," Ridpath says, "he has not introduced any (NCAA) legislation nor suggested that this be the requirement associationwide."

But even from critics, there is grudging respect.

Retired Indiana professor Murray Sperber has railed in books and public commentary about the excesses of college sports and the NCAA's inattention to them. He points to Brand's pay — nearly $738,000 in salary and benefits in 2003, using the non-profit association's most recent tax filings — as further excess, particularly at a time when Brand is carrying the banner of fiscal restraint.

Yet Sperber concedes, "He is earning his money. He was hired to put an academic patina on the NCAA, to make it look academic and connect it with higher education in the public's mind. And he's been able to do that. ... He's got some stuff in motion that, if it came to fruition, would be important."

Unlike Bud Selig, Paul Tagliabue and other pro league commissioners, the NCAA president cannot dictate policy. That's done by various governance boards. The president identifies issues, offers direction and works to build consensus — the latter a particular challenge in a voluntary organization of more than 1,000 schools and conferences of varying size and ambition.

Brand nonetheless has proven adept at shaping, if not setting, policy. He's widely complimented as a good listener, bringing disenfranchised groups such as basketball coaches into the loop. He's politically astute, lining up allies in a cause and then broadening support, whittling the expectations of opposing factions until they occupy some common ground.

That, in part, is how the NCAA was able to respond to the Colorado recruiting scandal in a little more than six months, passing a series of measures last August that, among other things, prohibit the use of private and chartered airplanes and plying prospects with extravagant meals and lodging. Brand termed them "steps in the right direction," though critics maintained they didn't go far enough.

"Having been a university president — in a public university especially — you always have multiple constituents with different interests, sometimes in conflict with one another," says Brand, a former philosophy professor who ran Indiana's eight-campus system for eight years and the University of Oregon for five years before that. "I'm carrying experiences from those positions in which you learn to take the best of each group and not dwell on the differences. See if you can help the groups come together for the betterment of all."

His effectiveness also stems from his cachet with university CEOs, whose profile in NCAA matters continues to rise. Brand is one of them. Immediate predecessors Cedric Dempsey and Dick Schultz had been athletics directors.

"He has changed the audience to which he can deliver his message," Iowa AD Bob Bowlsby says. "Presidents listen to him, and I'm not sure, going back even to Walter Byers (who first headed the association), that presidents necessarily listened to the executive director or the president in quite the same way."

Academic initiatives rolling

Brand's deepest imprint thus far comes from the academic measures, which will subject lagging teams to scholarship losses next fall and eventually to bans on bowl, basketball tournament and other postseason opportunities. Before that came toughened academic standards requiring athletes to step up their yearly progress toward degrees. While the moves already were in the works when he joined the NCAA, Brand was a relentless advocate.

He also has taken up the cause of athletes' welfare, directing the association's staff to be more flexible and give players the benefit of doubt in borderline cases involving their eligibility.

There have been bumps. Nine months into his tenure, Brand surprised NCAA staffers and other officials with an endorsement of a $2,000-$3,000 hike in the value of athletics scholarships, a noble but financially impractical proposal from which he had to back away. He has talked tough about the dismally low number of minority head coaches in I-A football but failed to incite improvement. The numbers, in fact, dropped from five to three in the last year.

Brand's new bond with men's basketball coaches could be imperiled by the NCAA Management Council's cool response two weeks ago to a package of far-reaching proposals — drawn up by the coaches — that would increase their access to recruits and, during the offseason, to players already in their programs. The council bluntly indicated it doesn't trust the coaches.

His new fiscal initiative is hardly a slam-dunk. Athletics directors are particularly skeptical of any attempt to curb competitive appetites.

Unlike academics, spending is not an area in which the NCAA can lay down guidelines. Brand's only tool is persuasion, and toward that he has appointed a task force of school presidents to help preach moderation. "In the next two or three years," he says, "we should really know how far we can go with this."

That will take Brand close to the end of a five-year contract that runs through 2007. He suggests he's open to serving beyond that, though it would appear to mean giving up more than $300,000 in deferred compensation from Indiana — collectible if he returns from a specially approved leave of absence by age 65.

"I'm enjoying myself. I think I am having a positive impact. And as long as both of those are true and my health holds up ... I'll continue," he says.

"I've felt throughout my life that I enjoy myself the most, and probably am most productive, when I'm learning. Not just absorbing facts (but) being creative, developing new avenues, new approaches, new ways to look at things. The NCAA position has certainly enlivened me. I feel like I'm in a state of higher learning than I've been in some time."

Sperber would agree.

He gave Brand low marks for his tenure at Indiana, claiming he didn't address problems of growing class sizes and a dip in the percentage of full-time faculty teaching undergraduates — all while tuition was rising. "But I think he's done a better job so far as president of the NCAA," Sperber says.

"If you had told me two years ago that he's going to float through this job, that he's going to BS people as much as he can, put in his time, collect his paycheck, do a lot of PR, put the best face on things and, after five years, stop and go back and collect his retirement from IU, I'd have said, yeah, that's a scenario that definitely could happen. But in fact he's done more. He really has gotten hold of some of these reform initiatives.

"He's sort of surprised me."

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NCAA Recruiting Rules

Newsday: Things heating up for Gwaltney

The final recruiting stage for the running back got underway Tuesday afternoon when USC coach Pete Carroll arrived on a private jet with a large coaching staff in tow.
USAToday: NCAA sees Myles of progress

That, in part, is how the NCAA was able to respond to the Colorado recruiting scandal in a little more than six months, passing a series of measures last August that, among other things, prohibit the use of private and chartered airplanes and plying prospects with extravagant meals and lodging. Brand termed them "steps in the right direction," though critics maintained they didn't go far enough.
Wasn't usage of a private jet deemed illegal by the NCAA last year? I thought the NCAA mandated that recruiting trips must be taken on commercial airlines, to level the playing field? Can someone clarify what the actual rule is, and if USC is in violation of it?
 
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SC"U"Mbuster said:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2005-01-24-myles-progress_x.htmWasn't usage of a private jet deemed illegal by the NCAA last year? I thought the NCAA mandated that recruiting trips must be taken on commercial airlines, to level the playing field? Can someone clarify what the actual rule is, and if USC is in violation of it?
I think it refers to using the private jets to transport the players to recruiting visits. The coaches are still able to travel privately.
 
Upvote 0
Somehwhat off the original subject, but if I CAN I WILL travel aboard a private jet, but when I begin telling recruits how much my jetfuel costs just to come cross-country to see them (unless specifically prodded, and then it should still not happen).... then that's bush.
 
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