Brand: Stay out of athletics

The men and women up the road at the NCAA are searching for a new president.\nIf the executive committee is clueless -- which it is, judging by the way they let television networks decide football's "champion" -- IU president Myles Brand would be the first choice to replace Cedric Dempsey, who announced Tuesday that he will step down when his term expires Jan. 1, 2003.\nAlthough some college presidents are being mentioned to replace Dempsey, Brand hasn't been mentioned as a candidate. In fact, he'll probably never appear on the NCAA's list. But for a moment let's consider the ways Brand and some of his cronies would change the organization and college athletics.\nOne of the neat things about college football and basketball is that anybody with cable television can follow their favorite team. On some days, fans can watch their alma mater and then flip the channel and watch a hated rival. Those with the a satellite dish or digital cable have the ability to watch almost any game at any time. The NCAA deserves credit for allowing fans such access to its two most popular sports.\nIf Brand were NCAA president, fans would need a private jet to follow their favorite team. Instead of broadcasting college basketball games during the winter, a Brand-led NCAA would package chemistry labs and business lectures as sports programming. Of course, such events would be commercial free.\nImagine a group of alumni wearing cream and crimson to cheer for old IU as it battles Big Ten schools in an academic bowl. It would be interesting to see how many alumni come from Evansville, South Bend and Indianapolis to catch the action. Maybe some would show up early, park their cars in a "C" lot, receive a $30 parking ticket before drinking orange juice and eating carrots as they wait for the doors to Ballantine 013 to open.\nThe guess here is that tickets would cost about $25,000, which translates to the price of tuition in a few years. Brand has to make up for the lack of sponsor money somehow, so why not take it out on the customers?\nThe potential of the academic bowl is unlimited. The "arms race" of college athletics would be destroyed. New facilities aren't needed when old lecture halls are sufficient.\nOne of the biggest problems Brand has with college athletics is inappropriate commercialization. If an academic bowl existed, forget about even appropriate commercialization. No company with any business sense would want to get involved.\nBrand wouldn't have to worry about late starting times either. No cable network, not even PBS, would televise such an event. Some newspapers might cover the academic bowl, but that's because without football and basketball they need to fill space. As far as the cable networks are concerned, dog shows and lumberjack festivals can fill the void left by the absence of college sports and receive higher ratings than an academic bowl.\nIf you think it's embarrassing when IU finishes near the bottom of the conference football standings, imagine the outcry when the Hoosiers finish 11th in a Big Ten academic bowl. At least, the University could hang billboards in Bloomington congratulating the academic team for competing in a bowl game.\nBesides Dempsey's retirement, graduation rates were a topic of discussion at the NCAA's convention in Indianapolis this week. Graduation rates are a problem. But institutions can only do so much to promote academics over athletics. Ultimately, a student-athlete's fate relies on the individual.\nIf Brand was the NCAA's president, the organization wouldn't have to waste times at its convention discussing graduation rates. An "academics first" president should be enough to fix the problem.\nWith Brand in control, the NCAA's meetings and conventions would discuss more important issues like ways to make college presidents even more powerful. It's not enough for college presidents to focus on academics. The NCAA needs nothing more than a group of classroom dwellers telling athletes how, when and where to play their games.\nThere are problems with college athletics. But as much as some presidents and professors don't want to hear it, there also are problems with the academic missions of most universities.\nYou rarely hear an athletic director tell a president how to run a university or dictate to a professor how to run his or her class. You shouldn't have to hear a president tell athletic directors how to run their programs. \nEspecially Brand.