Several forces suggest that this is a moment for board leaders and institutional chief executives to review their institutions’ commitments to intercollegiate athletics. The recent NCAA basketball championships showcased not only one of the year’s most compelling college sports events, but also the appropriate place of college sports at all competitive levels. An NCAA informational campaign, highlighted during the championships, emphasized that most of the more than 400,000 student athletes in our institutions don’t pursue careers in professional sports. It was a useful reminder about the purpose of intercollegiate athletics—to produce well-educated men and women whose intercollegiate athletics experiences have helped prepare them for well-rounded and successful lives.
At the request of member presidents across all athletics divisions, AGB’s Board of Directors recently supplemented its 2004 “Statement on the Oversight of Intercollegiate Athletics” with illustrative sample policies for boards, presidents, and athletics departments. The sample policies are consistent with the original document’s recommendations regarding board oversight and the delegation of athletics administration to institutional leadership. AGB supports the 2006 NCAA report “The Second-Century Imperatives: Presidential Leadership-Institutional Accountability,” which calls for institutions to implement sound fiscal controls for intercollegiate athletics—an especially wise suggestion for all athletics programs in this period of economic contraction and institutional assessments of strategic financial commitments.
The AGB statement clearly charges governing boards with the responsibility to be informed about and review the contracts for coaches and senior athletic department personnel. Instances of football or basketball coaches whose salaries stretch the bounds of appropriateness aren’t helpful in the ongoing debate about college costs. Nor do the data indicate that paying excessive salaries to coaches assures success on the field or court.
The IRS and Congress are on record about intercollegiate athletics. The recent IRS Compliance Survey (which AGB and NACUBO are analyzing in a separate project) includes sections on unrelated business income and compensation; underlying concerns about intercollegiate athletics are obvious.
AGB continues to urge boards to develop a process whereby all board members commit to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities for athletics in the same way they do for other areas of campus. While AGB’s athletics statement may continue to serve as a useful policy guide, what is essential is that boards and trustees understand their policy authority in athletics, along with its limitations.
NCAA president Myles Brand, who recently announced he is fighting a serious health problem, has been a transformative figure in higher education and in recent years has dedicated his leadership to reinforcing the academic value of intercollegiate sports. AGB’s board, in a special recognition included in the updated version of its “Statement,” notes that Myles “has championed both the welfare and academic success of student athletes and the sound management of intercollegiate athletics programs.” His is a standard that governing boards should be certain they support.
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