NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 29, 2001

David Berst

Cedric Dempsey

Bill Saum

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Thank you, Wally. Good afternoon. I got to tell you a story. Last Saturday I attended the Division II Bakersfield Men's Basketball Finals, and they made reservations for me the night before. I got the bill slid under my door the next morning, and I'm sure someone had said that the president was coming. The bill was addressed to George W. Bush, President of the United States. I'm going to keep that one for posterity. It's a pleasure to be with you again. It seems like we have more people who found it today than we did last time we met. But I appreciate also the opportunity to give you some updates, and then I want to make sure that we have ample opportunity to answer your questions, because that's a major purpose of this function this afternoon. But it does seem to me there's some value in updating you on a couple of areas related to basketball specifically, and we'll try to address those. I'm going to talk about the proposals that will go to Division I Management Council next month regarding the Basketball Issues Committee's decisions this past fall. It deals with summer basketball evaluation and recruiting. I'm also going to discuss the amateurism and deregulation proposals that will be also coming up next month at the Management Council level. I felt that those were issues that you need to be updated on, and they may prompt other questions as we move forward. Let me just very quickly try to refresh your memory on what has happened as it relates to the Basketball Issues Committee. That committee began meeting last fall after the staff was charged to spend the summer from April until October gathering information, doing research, coming up with options, and considering what would take place in the summer area. But if you keep in mind that the most critical issue that probably is affecting men's basketball today from their perspective, that was the summer evaluation process and year-round recruiting calendar. It's critical because the NCAA Division I Board of Directors has already taken specific action related to that particular issue. As you probably know, the Board reduced the number of summer evaluation days from 24 to 14 days. It also eliminated the summer evaluation opportunity entirely beginning in the summer of 2002. So it was deemed by the Basketball Issues Committee that this was a major topic to explore and determine whether or not that was in the best interest of student-athletes. So if there's no change in the summer evaluation structure, there will be none beginning in 2002. I won't try to speculate on what will be an acceptable change in the summer environment other than to say that the Board is made up of reasonable individuals, presidents who are looking for efforts that will change the status quo. Based on accounts from various sources including the media, we know these things about the whole issue, we know much about the issues related to precollegiate basketball. There's lots of money involved in nonscholastic basketball, that we do know. We don't know all the sources, and we don't know all of it and how it's being spent, and we should try to find out and make that information public. There are lots of people who want to influence the thinking of these young prospects, and we're never going to stop that. But we can provide some alternative influences. Thirdly, summer camps and tournaments are fertile sites for various types of recruiting violations. We probably can't curtail the potential for violations completely, but we can certainly have a more significant presence. The overall benefit of summer camps is certainly open for debate. There are those within our own membership who want it eliminated entirely, and there are those who, especially those who benefit from seeing prospects in the summer camps and tournaments, and want the process to continue. The Division I Board of Directors is going to be looking for changes in the summer system that will assure we are addressing the current problems and that we can change the summer environment. Otherwise, I do not see them changing their previous action of eliminating summer evaluation in 2002. The Men'S Subcommittee has been careful not to overpromise results, and they believe that they have a sound package to begin with. Let me give you the basics in the four areas that they identified that set the framework for their recommendations. One is education. Two, certification. Three, regulation. Four, accommodation. Let me expand on those. Establishing, one, in the area of education, is to establish a year-round education and mentoring program for elite level prospects, beginning with those at 12 years of age and continuing that mentoring program through high school. This would also require uniform and comprehensive educational programs for all summer camps and tournaments. I think those of you who follow particularly the shoot camps know that they do run some educational programs with different emphasis. Their recommendation from the Issues Committee is that the NCAA basically would run programs that would have strong educational emphasis. The goal here is to provide an alternative to external influences in the lives of elite basketball prospects and to develop relationships with prospects to help them understand what lies before them educationally. Under certification, that second basic principle, the proposals would require comprehensive public financial disclosure for all summer basketball events. Some people have referred to this as throwing sunshine on the source and trail of money in certified events. Secondly, it would require participants on nonscholastic teams to reside either within the state in which a team is located, or within 100 miles of the participant's residence. Thirdly, it would require greater accountability of coaches involved with certified summer events. We have had discussions with AAU, we've had discussions with the High School Federation, and our goal with this accountability would be that, for an event to be certified, those coaches that would be participating either at the camp level or at the tournament level would be certified by one of those two bodies, either the AAU and High School Federation. We would prohibit agents from operating certified events and would keep agents or boosters from financing certified events. The third area, which is regulation, really there are two pieces of significance related to that area. There would be more NCAA oversight at certified events. We have, in the past, periodically and on a regular basis looked at different events in the summertime, but I would say that our certification process has not been extremely extensive. And one of the goals would be to have a stronger certified process for the camps and for the tournaments. And NABC, develop a code of ethics that set standards for behavior of coaches and enforces those standards. Frankly, this is one of the most important pieces of this proposal. Coaches in the NABC must take responsibility for their actions. As it relates to accommodation, which is the fourth area the group dealt with, the subcommittee will propose a period of 20 consecutive days in July for summer evaluation. As many of you may know, this is four less than what we have had and six more than what will exist this summer for evaluation purposes. Twenty days seem to be a good compromise, but it is certainly one of those things that we'll continue to monitor as we go through this process. There is also a number of changes proposed for the academic year recruiting process, all designed to move the NCAA coach back into the high school or scholastic setting more frequently. Secondly, is to provide earlier contact between a college coach and the prospect, where there would be opportunity in the junior year for the college coach to have contact with the prospective student-athletes. Thirdly would be to move fall evaluations back to the high school campus. There's a different approach currently where there are outside tournaments in the fall in which there are some evaluation programs, so that would be eliminated. Permits juniors in high school to make official visits. So that's part of the earlier-contact concept that was put forth. I'm not going to go into each of these, but there are copies of the subcommittee's report available here in the media workroom for you if you would like to see the detailed description of each of these broad areas that I've mentioned. I'm not going to stand here today or sit here today before you and tell you that the problems with summer evaluation and basketball recruiting will be over if these proposals are approved. We're going to try a number of approaches and pay attention to the results. We see this as a dynamic process, but we think that with the proposed changes that there is certainly some potential for positive change. But there's still much left to be done, and that will depend upon the will of honorable people overcoming the practices of those who want to profit from relationships with the lead prospects. Our track record in college basketball has been great in ensuring that good will triumph in this area. That certainly is one of our emphases with NABC. They have a major responsibility to make sure that we can make a change in the summer environment. There's no magic bullet to wipe out all of those who exploit young players, but the subcommittee is committed to giving the good side as many tools to fight it as possible. Let me move on to amateur deregulation, I'll be rather quick on that. As you know, Division II adopted regulation at the January convention that significantly deregulated that division's amateurism rules. Let me just quickly put that in perspective for you and let you know where Division I is in their discussions and process. Division II now permits prospects to enter their name, prospective student-athletes, the name and the draft, and be drafted, permits to sign a contract, play with professionals, and to receive pay for play, then, sever the relationships and participate as an amateur in the same sport at a Division II school. Division II prospects can also accept prize money such as the Olympic operational goal money, which is based upon their place in finish at the Olympics. Prospects who choose to take advantage of these opportunities instead of enrolling in college will have to establish a year-in-residence, very similar to our transfer rule, before competing in college; and they lose a year of eligibility for each year of organized competition after high school. Division I has a similar set of proposals that the membership is reviewing at this point, but the Agents and Amateurism Subcommittee in Division I and the Academics Eligibility Compliance Cabinet have offered several additional amendments and recommendations which are somewhat new, and I suspect many of you are not aware of, that need to be at least presented to you. They have recommended removing men's and women's basketball from application of the proposals for a two-year period while they continue to study the effects of the package on that sport. In addition, the cabinet has proposed amendments that would reduce the opportunity to participate in organized competition including professional play to one year after high school graduation or enrollment. And that would prohibit a prospect from accepting compensation until after high school graduation in a sport sponsored by his or her high school. The deregulation package, adopted by Division II, also allows a prospect to accept educational expenses for private secondary institutions. The Division I Cabinet has proposed an amendment that would restrict the acceptance of those educational expenses to post-high school, precollege enrollment only; preparatory school specifically. This amendment addresses the concern allowing high school athletes to accept educational expenses would result in the stacking of private high school teams, and certainly in a response to the concerns that we had expressed from the High School Federation. You might say, why is there a need in Division I to amend proposals that have already been adopted in Division II? In some ways you might say that's the beauty of our new federated structure. Each division does have the ability to define rules and regulations as they think is in the best interest of their particular division. Division I has received considerable and greater concern about the effect of specific sports and secondary educational issues. These amendments are designed to address those concerns. Because there are significant changes in the preenrollment package of proposals, they will receive management council review in Division I in April and then go back out to the membership for comment. That means that they will get final review by the Board of Directors; and the Board of Directors, which many of you know, are composed of presidents. They also plan to spend much of their summer meeting discussing this legislation, and we would anticipate that a vote by the Board would be taken in October. Now let me mention the post-enrollment proposals. They will go back to the Board at the April meeting. There is some confusion, I think, between what is part of the amateurism regulation package and the package related particularly to the opportunity for students to receive additional funds in Division I. The post-enrollment package would permit student-athletes to accept the Olympic operational goal grants without jeopardizing their eligibility. It would allow student-athletes to accept compensation or fee for lessons under specific conditions. It would authorize the NCAA to pay premiums for student-athletes who qualify for disability insurance. And, it would permit a student athlete to obtain a loan of no more than $20,000 over the four years of eligibility based upon future earnings potential. Now, why do we want to deregulate amateurism is a basic question. Isn't this the bedrock, I guess, of intercollegiate athletics? We hear that quite often. The answer is we still feel that this is within our principles of amateurism, and we will continue to protect those principles. The proposals really do not affect the amateur status in college. They are based upon the three core values. What is best for prospective athletes, in assuring a competitive equity in competition, and a commitment to education as a primary goal. They are based on a belief that there should be alternatives available to post-secondary athletes who may not believe they are ready for college and want to explore professional athletics while still protecting competitive equity and promoting education by looking for ways to keep elite college athletes in school longer. I believe in this philosophy, and I support these proposals and amendments. As I said at the convention in January, "We have to stop trying to change our amateurism by laws through waivers and deregulate in a way that's fair and equitable to as many constituents as possible." As Wally indicated, David Berst, who is the Chief of Staff for Division I and Bill Saum, who many of you are well aware has been our Director for Gambling and for Agents is with us today for any specific questions in those areas that I can't answer, or they'd prefer I don't answer, one of the two, and want to take the time now to open up for any questions that you might have.

WALLACE RENFROW: As we get ready to open up for questions, there are a couple of folks with hand mikes, so I would ask you to wait until the hand mike gets to you. Please identify yourself and your affiliation so we can get it on the transcript. I know that they're going to appreciate the fact that I said that. Also, there are handouts, if you didn't get them, on both the basketball package and the amateurism and deregulation package at the back of the room. We'll have them in the media room. I would remind you that all of the supplements that go to the various governance bodies are now available on NCAA on-line at www.NCAA.org. If you go to the membership section there, you'll be able to find those documents. Now we will, in fact, open it up to questions. First question is over here.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: I don't know if there's a hypocrisy. There certainly is concern. That is one of the issues that has been explored as it relates to the Basketball Issues Committee, and it's also a concern to the Football Issues Committee that's studying the graduation right now. Collectively across our 360,000 students, student-athletes still graduate at a higher rate than the normal student body. In basketball, we have a declining graduation rate, is remaining stable now for some period of time, but still is much too low. We're also very concerned about what has been a declining rate in football. Football has declined 8 percent in the last five years, so those are two areas of concern certainly to our membership and to the national association.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Yes, it is. In terms of preimposed. I think the key, and one of the things certainly that the cabinet and the subcommittee on this had looked at all along, is when you start breaking it apart too much, you run into those inconsistencies that we have right now. So it is certainly doable to -- and we have looked at the post- and pre- legislation independently, and even with some of the pre- legislation - pre-enrolled legislation - there are pieces of that that might be done. And certainly one way to address that has been the concerns as it relates to basketball specifically. And that's why, as a cabinet, went back and discussed the forum that took place in January at the national convention on this and heard what the membership had to say about it. They began to feel that maybe basketball needed further study and that we would, in the proposal going forward, that we shouldn't hold up the values for the rest of the sports while we continue studying basketball.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: That's the preenrollment.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: I would not say the BCS is involved in that way. You must keep in mind that our structure in Division I now is really based upon conference representation, and obviously with that new structure has become, based upon what the conference position is, there's been more responsibility put in the conference offices. Some conferences operate differently than others. So when there is disagreements between what is being said particularly from the conference office, the responsibility that falls back upon the members of that conference to determine whether or not that commissioner or anyone else is representing them correctly.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: We have not taken an official position on that at this point. I was asked just recently personally what my feeling was on the developmental league. I think there are two principles that conflict on this. One is the principle of college education is not for everyone; and for those athletes who do not see college education as a future opportunity and goal for them, certainly participating in a developmental league is certainly an avenue. It's not unlike what occurs with baseball right now. That's not unusual to see high school athletes come out and go into baseball immediately. On the other hand, which I think conflicts with that principle, is would a basketball developmental league discourage young people from certainly pursuing the educational route? And that would be of concern, that we should not try to develop an easy avenue, because we all know that if that prospective student athlete out of high school does not pursue a college education, they don't have many other alternatives to them, and very few of them are going to make it into the NBA, and where do they go from the time that they go into a developmental league? I have strong concerns of, one, the perception that comes out of the developmental league in the potential discouraging prospective student-athletes to pursue an education. On the other hand, as I've said before, education is not necessarily for everyone. So if we could find a balance in there, I think the one balance that certainly David Stern has advocated is at least put an age limit so that the 18 -, 19 -, potentially 20-year-old has the potential to pursue educationally some goals coming out of school. But I don't know if that answers your question totally, Welch, but I don't see it all negative to having a developmental league. I think it provides an opportunity for some young people, but it would concern me if people saw that as their route to go rather than looking at the educational responsibility.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, I don't think any of us enjoy, when you talk about graduation rates even, when you -- what's happened is that we have too many basketball players who are coming to school with no intention ever to finish school. Many times, to showcase their wares for a year or two at the most, and then move on. That is not the role of intercollegiate sports. We still have a basic focus, a basic mission, and that's education. We should not use our system for that purpose. And when you argue that position, certainly developmental league makes sense.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: We have asked AAU and the High School Federation to do that. We don't have any ability to really develop that certification process. But I think as we went through our summer evaluation, one thing -- and research on what is going on in the summertime, I do think the AAU sometime gets blamed for problems that they sometimes have no control over because many of the coaches that are involved in the city programs are not even AAU members. So one way we can jointly work together, and we encourage both of those organizations to help develop strong certification programs for their coaches, then we can certainly in terms of our evaluation only sanction those camps where those coaches have been certified.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, it really, it's not a shocking age, no. We know that young people are identified at a very early age in the sport of basketball. Basketball is somewhat unique to other sports, it seems to me. Certainly it's unique to football. It's very difficult in football at 12 to tell who's going to be an elite football player. One of the athletes that we interviewed last summer said, "I knew at 12 years old I was going to be a professional basketball player." It is much easier to project and predict the potential capability of players at an earlier age in basketball. So if we are going to try to compete, if you will, against those unsavory influences upon young people, we have to get them at the same age that they're being identified; and we don't see that as a problem in being able to identify those top athletes.

WALLACE RENFROW: Follow-up question, yes. We'll get the mike to you.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, they're saying things now, and they're hearing some things right now. We want to try to at least compete against some of the things that they are hearing falsely.

WALLACE RENFROW: We have two questions on the left and then Dan.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: I don't know if I can really answer that. That's a question, when you get a chance with Mike Tranghese, Chair of the Basketball Committee at the present time, to address that. I haven't been part of their discussions on that. I know when I was on the committee and chaired the committee that we certainly had a philosophy of moving the sites of championships around, but I can't address specifically the Syracuse issue.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, certainly part of the summer evaluation is trying to, as we said, put sunshine on the dollars. And so we address it from that standpoint. You ask a broader question, it seems to me, when you ask about coaches' salaries. I think that gets into a very broad, philosophical question, which I'll be happy to go into if you want me to. But I do think some of you heard me at the convention and know that I spoke very strongly of the concern about what was classified since the arms race, but certainly the rising cost of intercollegiate sports and what we might do about it. And the concern I have is that growing imbalance between what I would say is commercialization and the educational mission of what we're trying to accomplish. That was, again, one of the focal points I addressed in January, was a refocus on our educational mission.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: To host Final Fours, I believe the minimum right now, if I recall, is 25,000, unless they just recently changed that. And that obviously eliminates many of the sites west. There are not many sites that would seat more than that. The battle in issue that the committee has struggled with from the times I was even on it in the '80s was having a typical basketball setting versus meeting the interest and demands of the public and of our institutions to attend the event. We tried to find that balance, and obviously most of our sites now are in domes that will seat up to 40 -, 45,000, and partially that's to help institutions meet the requests. I had a very heated discussion with the president last year from the Final Four who was very concerned because he couldn't provide enough seats for all their people. The committee has increased the number of seats this year. I believe each school is getting 4,500. I know having been in an institution that participated in a Final Four, 4,500 is not enough tickets. So we keep trying to help institutions to meet their demands in terms of tickets. At the same time, all the other different constituencies, we're trying to find a balance there. Many people hear criticism all the time of providing seats, up in the balcony in the dome, people want to be at this event. They -- I can remember when I was on the committee in Seattle, one year, we had people that just wanted to be in the dome that paid $5 to watch it from behind the temporary bleachers on television. They wanted to feel the excitement of being at the event. You balance that versus trying to provide that more pure, if you will, basketball setting. I think the committee's worked hard at that, and we've had relatively fewer complaints recently about the size. As you recall, I think we had a couple times where we went up to 60-some-odd-thousand. Now they've stayed in the 40s on most of the recent venues.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, there's no question there's a huge interest in this event. I think it's arguably as popular as any event in sports in this country. So that leads, certainly, to commercialization, because there's so many opportunities for schools to generate funds in their sports programs, and specifically in the sport of basketball and football. So you have that interest driving the marketplace, if you will, at the collegiate level. One of my major concerns is that we presently have 48 schools that are generating more revenues than they're spending. We have 976 schools in this country. We spend $4.1 billion a year in institutions of higher education on intercollegiate sports in this country. Each institution in Division I has asked to be as self-sufficient as possible. When you put that criteria upon programs to be self-sufficient, it begins to affect people's decisions on what you pay coaches, on building facilities, on other kinds of promotional activities that sometimes comes in conflict -- I don't think comes in contact with the educational mission that we have. Personally, I have toyed with the idea. I think in a revenue distribution we ought to take the basketball fund away from the revenue distribution because it places emphasis upon winning. And, again, that drives a lot of it. I'd rather see it be placed upon our broad-based program, our format that we use in evaluation, and then tie in some educational incentives tied in with it. I think it disturbed me last week when I heard a commissioner, someone ask him about his team advancing. And his first comment was, "That means $860,000 to my conference to advance." That changes one's perspective. As an athletic director, I recall opening a season one year, I watched a kid kick a 55-yard field goal. I didn't see the ball going through the uprights, I saw about $400,000 going through the uprights. I knew it was going to cost us a television spot the next year. I do feel it's important we begin to change that focus; otherwise, that 48 teams is going to be less and less and less. And soon, we will have fewer programs in this country and we will leave out a lot of opportunities for young people to compete in sports, which I think still has great educational value to it. So that's my concern. That's my concern. I saw one coach quoted here saying they wish they were back on tenured track. I think that fits. If you're talking about refocusing on the educational mission, don't pay them $2 million. Put them on an academic track and give them the security that exists, and evaluate them on what they're doing with their teams and young people in the educational process. I had to set that stage for you to give you an answer to the high salaries, but I think it's a part of the whole piece. I was guilty of that, if I can just continue on in this in an emotional pitch, Wally. I was guilty of this. I hired a coach for well over half a million dollars because I was told to balance a budget that was $450,000 in debt, and I was told if I wanted to improve any facility, I had to raise the money. And so to do that, I went out and hired a coach that could do it. He's done a pretty good job of it. Our income went from $2 million a year net to over $4 million a year net. Is that right? I don't think so. I think it's leading to the kind of problems that we have, and we need to hopefully begin to address that, and we've encouraged our presidents to become active. You can tell when I get emotional sometimes.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: I'm sorry, I don't. (Laughing.)

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: That one I understand. Yes, currently, from the -- from our National Budget office, there is a $10 million student-assistance fund that goes directly back to student-athletes. We have recommended that an additional student-opportunity fund of $15 million be added to that with an 8 percent increase annually. There's also another up to $40 million when you add in an academic-assistance fund for student-athletes that those dollars must go directly over the life of the contract, that will be three-quarters of a billion dollars that will go directly back to student-athletes and that purpose. You heard me talk earlier about the legislation to provide the opportunity for loan based on future earning power. The operational goal money, the prize money, the opportunity to earn through teaching approach by student-athletes. Those are other ways. Obviously, the Pell grant is another way. The work program was designed also to assist student-athletes. So there have been an increasing number of ways in the past few years for student-athletes, and even Chaney, at least the latest quote I saw of him, said that student-athletes who need to be able to earn up to the cost of attendance, and we're providing a number of avenues now for that kind of student athlete.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: That's one thing we have encouraged there be an intensive study on. I do believe this, I do believe if we are going to change some of the current culture in terms of increase in expenses and some of the other issues I mentioned a moment ago, it has to be done at a national level. I do think it's very difficult. Let me say it this way, I think presidents need to be insulated from decisions at times. There are very few presidents, I think, could be successful in any radical change in intercollegiate athletics and survive. I often wondered why Jim Duderstadt, who recently wrote a book, never said those things when he was at the University of Michigan. We know why. They wouldn't have been well-received. That's no criticism of President Duderstadt, but I do think in order to make any major change, it has to be done in a way that presidents can be insulated from that . They should be part of the decision-making, certainly, but we need to do it on a more global basis.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: I think you're probably referring to discussions that the association had related to the Confederate flag issue, I think is what you're referring to. The state of Georgia has taken action probably since you have seen that in adopting a new flag from all of the feedback that we have had related to that, that has been an acceptable compromise within the state. And our presidents will review the status of where we are with future championships in states where there might be hospitable environments for our student-athletes. Certainly Georgia has taken some position on that certainly since the material you've read.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: First of all, we address it, one, from our own national championships. I am very pleased with the progress that we have made there. I think about five years ago we had about 22,000 student-athletes participating in our then about 79 national championships. Now we have almost 50,000 young people participating in our national championships, 84 national championships. Much of that is a result of growth for women in terms of their opportunities. When you look at the number of athletes that we have, 360,000, plus where we are in terms of the number of athletes that have opportunity in post-season play, it's almost one out of every eight student-athletes has an opportunity to compete in intercollegiate sports and post-season and at the NCAA level. We also attempt through educational programs to help institutions address their gender equity needs. We run annual seminars and meetings for our membership in addressing those issues and trying to provide clarification of how to do it. We've certainly encouraged institutions not to look at dropping sports as a means to accomplish that goal, but to see what other means might be accomplished to meet the requirements of gender and gender equity. So we've looked at one from a national level of what we need to do from a national association, and we made, I think, marked progress in our championship areas which is where we might be evaluated best. But we've also tried to assist our member institutions in helping them address the issue.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Yeah, that was a real problem early on in what was the Student Assistance Fund that we have right now. 15 million will not kick in until we begin our new contract in 2002 or '03. But one of the early problems we had with the Student Assistance Fund was institutions using it, but I believe last report I saw, David, was about 98 percent. The only amount of the 10 million left right now is $100,000. So it's, I think, as institutions have become more sophisticated in how to use it and recognize it's available for that purpose, we tried to make it more flexible. And certainly the 15 additional million that I'm talking about which takes it to 25 million, we are encouraging even greater flexibility. About the only restrictions we've placed at this point, it can't be used for bricks and mortars and salaries. It can be used directly for student-athletes.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, I certainly look at that, obviously, from the justification standpoint most of the money goes back directly to the institutions to help them in that sense. We've not received anybody saying, "Let's not take the money," although some people would say we ought to do different in areas. But I think that the contract is representative of the intense interest in intercollegiate sports in this country. It is, I still believe, the most appreciated sports program in this country. One of your fellow colleagues, publishers, mentioned to me a couple years ago that after reviewing all the sport organizations in this country, they felt that the NCAA and the college sports programs were much more in line with what the mission of their paper was than any of the other sport organizations of this country. So it has certainly a healthy part of it, and at the same time we're not naive enough to believe that we don't have a number of issues. Those are raised with us daily that we must address.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: I heard the "P" word used differently last night on MTV. (Laughing.) I'm sorry. You lost me there. I lost myself.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, certainly classification is one. There is a lot of concern about our subclassification in Division I-A, I-AA football. That creates continual concerns of how do we determine that. And there is a subgroup working right now on about five options, if I remember, of how maybe to reclassify football in Division I and whether there should be any classification at all. Certainly, that's an option. Maybe they're just Division I football; let the marketplace take care of itself. So that's one. Ironically, although we have limited control right now in terms of post-season football, our whole governance structure in Division I is based on football. Our whole voting system in Division I is based on equity basis and the equity basis really ties in to I-A football. So the legislative process as to how classification might affect it is another serious problem to look at. Although we're not looking at the "P" word, as you indicated, we certainly are looking at post-season competition. We have a 26 Bowls and four I think we're holding right now. How many Bowls should there be? The whole post-season comes up to Bowls. We have too many conferences that are paying Bowls to send their schools to go to those games. Is that, or shouldn't that be a concern, I guess, of our membership. So post-season play is a concern, not whether or not there's a playoff or not. The other factor, as I've already addressed, is what seems to me a rather rapid decrease in graduation rates over that period of time. As I mentioned, eight percent in five years is somewhat a significant decrease. In trying to address what is causing that, you can identify somewhat in basketball easier than you can in football, but it's harder to tell what's causing the decrease in football. You know, I think going into this, none of us felt football was broken, but there were a lot of issues that need to be looked at and possibly enhanced. Those are probably three of the major ones, I think. The other part is really expensive with football, which ties into that arms race issue of "Are we going to run ourselves out of business," in that sense. I still believe in the value of playing football, and I've been in the area long enough to have seen schools that try to use football and feel like the only value of playing football is if you play at the highest level. I know you've heard me say this before, but I was in California for a number of years and I watched about seven schools in California try to make it in Division I-A, not make it and rather than dropping to a level, they just dropped the sport altogether. That is a concern to me when I look at what's happening with the arms race and the financial status of many of our institutions as to what might happen with the game. So I think the long-term viability is a concern to the committee.

WALLACE RENFROW: There's a question at the back on the right, one in the front on the right then, Mike, we'll get to you.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, we were very optimistic last year. If we could have gotten it to the floor, we felt very comfortable that it would pass. This past last week, the House reintroduced the gambling bill and we are hopeful that the Senate will move forward soon and that we will see the same kind of interest within both the House and Senate as we had last year. Our problem is we just could not get it to the floor last year through some technical procedures that were available to both House and Senate. So if we could ever get to the floor, I feel very confident that it will pass.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: They will be looked at in April and sent out to our membership, our normal legislative process, we have two times a year in Division I that they vote on legislation; one is in April and one is in October. They will review it in April, send it to the membership for comment, and it will be voted on in October.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Well, we certainly have addressed that, and part of certainly CBS' approach to that was the Direct Television ability for people to pick up whatever games they want. I think they made some changes even this year. They began to move away from some games that were blow-outs and moved to more competitive games. They attempted to do that. They tried to find a balance, if you will, between someone wanting to watch a game all the way through, which could be done through the Direct Television approach, versus going to the most competitive games in the marketplace. We had a lot of discussion related to how do we address that across this country? Starting times helped a little bit in that process as well.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: No, there's nothing in the contract that would require them to, if you're suggesting using a number of other platforms, there's nothing in the contract that would address that.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Why?

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: We looked at that. Certainly some of the bids from other networks included different kind of platforms. We weighed that with obviously the other benefits of the package, and I think the package was more than just for basketball; it was an opportunity to have all of our sports exposed that are under the current contract, and they would have a commitment to do that in whatever happens in the future. And we have a monthly show on television. We have a number of other promotional opportunities throughout the year, so there was a lot more to that contract than just basketball to look at that I think added value to where we ended up.

WALLACE RENFROW: We have two questions still. We've been at this an hour. I'm going to go ahead with these two questions. If you have other questions, we'll be happy to stay around. I know you'll have some individual questions. Mr. Dempsey and the others will be here for a few more minutes, but we'll try to shut it down after these two questions.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: (Laughing.) Yes, Malcolm. He is competing this weekend. What was your other question?

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: I recall back in the early '80s that there was a lot of discussion at that point in time in the direction of where we were going, and in particular football in this country, that we were going to have about 65, 66 teams competing in football at the major level. Then there was rejection at that time as the marketplace takes place, we'll be down to 33, 34 teams, then down to 18 teams that can't afford to keep up, if you will, with the Joneses. If you look historically now, we're getting there. We're at about 48 schools right now that are able to afford what they're doing. It is a great concern to me how fast that 48 is going to disintegrate. It's very obvious. One of the very few schools I see at this point, I just visited a couple weeks ago, is Notre Dame. Notre Dame is still running a program on the basis of addressing what the expenses will be for that program and revenues go back to the institution. Their revenues exceed what the expenses of the program are. Notre Dame has probably one of the lowest budgets at that "elite" level in football in this country. They may be living off of some heritage, but you might wonder, I'm sure many of their alums wonder why they're not as competitive as they used to be. They're competing against programs that have in some cases two and a half times the size of budgets that their program has. You can live off the past for so long competitively and not survive. So I have strong concerns of where this is going to end up if we don't do something to bring some perspective to it. Leaving it to the marketplace means we're going to have fewer and fewer schools competing and certainly at the Division I-A level of football.

WALLACE RENFROW: One piece of statistical information of the major factor of those 48 institutions in terms of the difference, those that have revenues exceeding expenses, and others are football attendance.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: Fourteen days this summer, and then next summer, currently there is none. So unless the membership takes action with the proposals I talked about, and unless that Board of Directors in Division I approves any change of that, we will not be involved in summer evaluation in 2002.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: I don't know that we have any formal study related to that. I do feel in some ways a lot of that was arbitrary to begin with in trying to come down with things. I know as the Basketball Committee began massaging what is the correct number of days to have, there was no magic number to that. They felt comfortable that 24 was too many, maybe 14 was not quite enough, and they, by consensus, really came to a comfort zone of feeling, "Let's split somewhere in the middle and go with 20." There was some support for that. There was no magic formula to arrive at that area.

WALLACE RENFROW: Thank you very much for coming today. Mr. Dempsey and the others will be available for a few more minutes for follow-up questions.

CEDRIC DEMPSEY: If you have questions related to gambling or agents, Bill certainly has expertise there as it relates to the process or the legislative process and what's taking place in Division I. It's a major direct responsibility for David Berst, and I'll be happy to answer that area. But if you want to try to get the best of your time, I suggest you might look at it there.