When faculty athletics representatives from the biggest sports programs gather this weekend for their annual meeting in Dallas, they should have reason to celebrate. After pushing for more than a year to gain a bigger voice in the NCAA’s governance process, they appeared to get it this spring: In April the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors approved a new requirement that one of every five seats on each of the association’s most-powerful committees go to faculty leaders involved with oversight of intercollegiate athletics.
Faculty members expected the change to go into effect this fall, but NCAA officials say it will take two years to be put in place. As a result, faculty members now hold 20 percent of the seats on just three of eight NCAA Division I councils and cabinets. On the influential Legislative Council, they have just one of 31 positions. Stirring the debate more: Some conference commissioners would like to see the requirements repealed because they don’t think faculty members are up to the job.
Approximately five of every six slots on this year’s councils and cabinets—163 of 197 positions—are held by athletics leaders, a ratio that is largely unchanged from last year.
“That is inexcusable. The faculty perspective ... is indispensable on these cabinets and councils,” says Josephine R. (Jo) Potuto, the faculty athletics representative at the University of Nebraska and president of the Division I-A FAR group, which helped push the change through. “If you took the position that you had to have one of five seats made up of women or ethnic minorities and came back and said you didn’t have anyone qualified, [college] presidents wouldn’t have accepted that.”
Conference officials, who nominate the candidates, make their selections in four-year cycles, and fewer than half of the slots opened up this year. Division I-A conferences filled 88 committee positions for this academic year, and they met the 20-percent requirement on all but the Legislative Council. Appointments for the rest of the Division I conferences expire over the next two years. The NCAA’s Division I board, which must approve the nominations, agreed to let the leagues stick to their established schedules instead of making the changes all at once, with the understanding that any turnover in seats must go toward meeting the new standard.
“If you are advocating for ensuring the 20 percent, you’re going to press for that to occur at the earliest possible time,” David Berst, the NCAA’s vice president for Division I, said in an interview. “You can unilaterally do it, but in doing so you are also going to disrupt the work that is being done on that council or cabinet.”
Alan J. Hauser, president of the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association, whose members come from all three NCAA divisions, doesn’t think the change will happen as soon as NCAA officials say. “If we could get there by 2012, I’d be happy,” he says. “But there’s no way we’ll get there if 2011 and 2012 make as small a movement in the right direction as was made this year.”
Too Big of a Role?
Faculty athletics representatives, who are appointed by presidents and chancellors and given varying levels of responsibility on their campuses, can offer a valuable perspective on NCAA committees, some conference officials say.
Many FAR’s are charged with overseeing the academic integrity of athletics programs, monitoring potential academic problems, and sometimes assisting in broader investigations of possible NCAA violations. They play a key role—some say too great of a role—on the NCAA’s Division I Academic Cabinet, where they hold 14 of 21, or two-thirds, of the positions. They have nearly a third of the spots on the Awards, Benefits, Expenses, and Financial Aid Cabinet and also met the requirement on the Amateurism Cabinet.
But as the NCAA’s governance process has changed in recent years, faculty athletics representatives say they have seen their national roles diminished. “Our members feel strongly about the need for more FAR involvement in the governance of the NCAA if there’s going to be more of a balance in how things are done,” says Mr. Hauser, who is the faculty athletics representative at Appalachian State University.
But several conference commissioners think faculty athletics representatives are pushing for too great of a role, arguing that many lack the qualifications for high-profile NCAA posts.
“We have a system that elevates people onto national committees with more clout than they have on their individual campuses and in their conferences,” says Thomas E. Yeager, commissioner of the Colonial Athletic Association. “It would be like if you had a faculty senate and said 20 percent of the seats ought to go to teaching fellows. They wouldn’t stand for it.”
Faculty reps acknowledge that they may not understand certain areas as well as athletics administrators do, such as television contracts, marketing agreements, or pro sports leagues. That inexperience can lead to unproductive committee debates and other problems, conference commissioners say.
And some faculty reps don’t want to take part in NCAA or league governance anyway. With teaching, research, and other responsibilities in addition to their athletics roles, many say they are already pinched for time. Only six of the 10 faculty athletics representatives in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference actively participate in league governance, says Richard J. Ensor, the conference’s commissioner. He and other commissioners worry that having a lean bench for committee appointments could put Division I-AA and I-AAA conferences, which already have a smaller proportion of seats on some NCAA committees, at a disadvantage in the governance process.
Diversity on Committees
A lack of diversity among faculty athletics representatives—the vast majority are white males—also makes their appointments problematic, Mr. Ensor says. The NCAA has strict racial and gender requirements for its committees: 35 percent of all NCAA cabinet and council positions must be filled by women, and 20 percent by ethnic minorities. “It puts the burden of gender and racial representation on the other positions,” like athletic directors and senior female administrators, he says.
Jack Evans, a longtime faculty athletics representative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has served on various NCAA committees, understands why conferences might be reluctant to see faculty members play a bigger role. Unlike athletics administrators and conference officials, he says, they do not all share the same view of the athletics enterprise.
“They’re less predictable, they are not of the profession,” says Mr. Evans, who stepped down as North Carolina’s FAR in July, in anticipation of retiring later this year. “Personally I find it disappointing but not surprising if conference commissioners are not willing to say some form of ‘We really do need a faculty voice in this.’”
His argument to conference officials: It’s better to bring the faculty perspective in early, at the council and cabinet levels, so the academic side of topics is “not decided on a hair trigger in a board meeting.”
As for finding the roughly 40 faculty members a year who are qualified and interested in serving, Mr. Evans isn’t worried: “It doesn’t seem like a Herculean task to me.”
