Afternoon with Myles

Myles Brand and Wally Renfro were an afternoon panel. I missed the lunch as mentioned earlier, but Brand spoke about integration of the athletic department into the campus. It was pretty obvious this is the new message from NCAA as it was brought home several times -- quite deftly by the two in staying on message. At first, it was a little cloying, but after time, it began to sink in how this really is a benefit to athletics. See below when the notes refer to items on coaches' salaries.

Several interesting questions from the crowd, and many of them followed the Rodney Dangerfield respect theme of past CoSIDA events. Both Brand and Renfro had some important messages to the group, and I'll focus these notes more on that mission.

The gist was: go out and work your campus, work your department, work your internal relations first before your public relations.

Some specifics, again paraphrased from their answers. Brand was the most direct with this.

Local relationships are critical that build confidence in your knowledge base and your approach. Campuses are small communities, and you need to build the relationships and the truthfulness of your perspective. Someone who understands the situations and positive solutions. It’s the local community, not pressure from a national group be it NCAA or CoSIDA.

Renfro added his perspective with:

Who is at the table when decisions are made? Someone legal and someone finance, but they are there because they bring solutions. If in our business, we are going to be engaged in a way to influence behavior is to come with solutions to problems. It’s not about promoting CoSIDA, but it’s about being prepared to bring solutions.

Here's some more that followed:

The uninformed faculty member needs context. Facts are rarely the story, context is the story. Coaches’ salaries are a major point. They are often the highest state employee in a state. Three to four dozen coaches at that level in the compensation package. Chances are on many flagship universities are many seven-figure compensation package faculty. So put the information in context, and keep athletics from being examined alone. (This may be one of the best items in the afternoon after the help-yourself advice.)

There may be faculty members who see resources to athletics are lost to academics. They may believe its a misdirection of resources. Comes back to the point of education and integration; creating some counter-pressure within the academic community to understand the role. Take the faculty senate president to lunch and find your COYA members.

Brand takes a question about what can we do to fix the lack of academic understanding. There is a gulf between athletics and academics on most campus. You won’t convince everyone, but you can reduce that large standard deviation in the middle. That has to be built on the campus. National media couldn’t do it for you, even if they agreed. The NCAA can’t do it and this organization can’t do it. It is tough work, but something only you can do on your campus.

Renfro uses a story from the Brown athletic director. When challenged on why Brown has athletics by the academic side, he reminds faculty that the Ivy League exists as a group of institutions that participate in athletics. So, Brown university professor, if athletics does not exist, you aren’t a faculty member at an Ivy League university.

There was little in the way of "news" in this (aside from some hints that the Division III split may be just around the corner -- no shock there), but it was interesting for this group to hear directly from the head of the organization not once today, but twice.