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CoSIDA CONVENTION 2011: MARCO ISLANDJune 27, 2011Amy PerkoMARCO ISLAND, FLORIDA CoSIDA Luncheon Keynote AMY PERKO: It's wonderful to be here. I was a little bit worried that I wasn't going to make it when last night in Atlanta when I guess my sprinting is not what it used to be, and while I sprinted from one end of the Atlanta airport to the other, they shut the door on me, and I barely missed that flight. I know you all know how it feels. It really is the agony of defeat when that happens to you. Then my next flight was delayed due to storms, so I made it in at 3:00 a.m. For those coordinators, you have a hard-working group because no one was out carousing the halls at 3:00 a.m. Unfortunately my room was close to an elevator and everybody was really hopping on that thing very early this morning. But it's good to be here, and I guess it is also fitting with Capital One sponsoring the All-America program because I've carried a Capital One card for years. One of the experiences that truly helped shape my thoughts and my approach wasn't covered in the intro, and that is what is learned from being a mother. I've had the wonderful experience of being able to coach our daughters in basketball, and our ten-year-old was shooting the other day out in the backyard, and she said, "Hey, mom, watch this," and she swished two nice shots right in a row, and she turned around, and she said, "Just call me mini-Maya." It really hit me for a number of reasons. One is my daughter doesn't lack for confidence, which is great, and two, I thought, wow, when I was her age, I was kind of like, well, who can I be, Skip Brown, or we had male models, you didn't have the female college basketball player. But the other thing that really hit me is just that simple aspirational boast on her part is one of millions of examples that I know you're familiar with that play out every day in something you already know about, the power of college sports and the positive impact it makes on young people and the goals that are created through the stories and messages that you share. So this afternoon I want to focus on that impact and the impact this group's work has made on me as well as the impact I believe each of you collectively can make in helping the enterprise address serious challenges. First I want to thank Joe Hornstein for this invitation and for John Humenik for your leadership with this group as well as the Academic All-America program. This is a very important group, it's a very important time in the history of college sports. One of the primary reasons that I'm here and have this platform is due to work of one of your former colleagues, a former Wake Forest sports information director Burt Witter. Burt handled media relations at Wake Forest when I played there, and sure, I did my part in approaching academics like I did basketball, great focus, great preparation, showed effort and persistence, but without Burt's initiatives and nominating me for Academic All-America I wouldn't have received that first honor and wouldn't have this platform. In receiving that first Academic All-America honor it really gave me a goal to achieve that in succeeding years. It really was a motivational factor for me in playing basketball as well as my class work. I also want to thank Ron Wellman and Steve Shutt at Wake Forest for nominating me for the Academic All-America Hall of Fame. It's a class and an honor that I will be forever humbled to be a part of. Tomorrow night new inductees will be honored in that Academic All-America Hall of Fame. As much as that gala and that occasion is about recognizing the honorees and their accomplishments, it's really a wonderful recognition of the importance of this group of professionals in communicating the values of college sports. CoSIDA made a profound statement when it started the Academic All-America Hall, later the Academic All-America Hall of Fame. CoSIDA did not have the NCAA or the presidents of universities or even the athletic directors telling them to start the program 60 years ago. This group of professionals was achieving academic excellence was a core value that needed to be recognized and albeit strengthened that program by doubling the number of athletes recognized every year who receive these prestigious honors. Achieving excellence in academics and athletics is certainly aspirational, but achieving a balance between the two is essential. It is the goal of achieving a balance that is at the heart of the work of the Knight Commission and that I've been involved with over the past several years. If the educational objectives of college sports are not at the core of what we do, college sports would not exist in the future. With this educational mission in the forefront and the balance that CoSIDA has promoted so well in its Academic All-America program, I want to share a couple of key Knight Commission recognitions that are framing policy discussions and are ones that we believe have helped align policies with our messages. First is just a little brief background on the Knight Commission that some of you may not be familiar with the group and who makes up the group and what its goal is. Real briefly, the commission is an independent group made up of university presidents, trustees and former athletes who are in leadership positions, and the commission studies issues and advocates for policy changes to better align college sports with the universities' core mission. The commission advocated for changes in a 1990 report and followed that in a 2001 report, and many of those recommendations have been adopted in some form by the NCAA and have impacted policy over the past two decades. But to move toward a higher level of academic expectation and success and to address growing financial challenges, the commission released a report last year titled "restoring the billion dollar values in future college sports." While this report of recommendations address Division I sports, I think the principles and key messages are really appropriate for all the divisions that are represented here today because all the divisions in the NCAA and in the other universities and businesses share the same core values and mission. For those of you that have not seen the report, I did bring a number of copies with me, and I'll have them available at the registration table, and the report is also on the Knight Commission's website. But the report was framed around two basic principles: One, academics first, and two, responsible spending. At every level of college sports, financial policy should aim to strengthen each institution's educational mission. The commission's blueprint for achieving greater accountability in athletics is outlined in three basic areas. One, greater transparency for athletics' finances including better measures to compare athletics and academic spending, and number two, rewarding institutions that make academic values a priority in athletics programs, and three, treating athletes as students first and foremost, not as professionals. While major parts of this report focus on financial reform, I want to highlight the recommendations that are essential to the area of rewarding institutions that make academic values a priority, since rewarding academic success is a value CoSIDA has elevated. There are two different recommendations in this particular area. The first addresses eligibility for championships, and the second recommends a new set of financial incentives to more closely tie revenue distribution to academic values. The first recommendation is to determine eligibility for championships at the start of each year and to commission such eligibility to all teams on track to graduate half of its players. Using the NCAA's new standards this would require APR scores that project a 50 percent graduation rate. As you know, the vast majority of teams meet this condition, and we believe that should count for something. Playing for a championship is a privilege that should be reserved for teams meeting academic standards. Since this recommendation was made it has had some impact on the direction the policy is going. The committees within the NCAA that work on these issues recommended a couple of changes to strengthen the program and have recommended moving the benchmark to that bar, that 50 percent graduation mark. They've also streamlined a penalty structure that will eliminate some of the ways in which underperforming teams currently are exempted from penalties. The second part of the Knight Commission's recommendations focus on aligning the financial incentives with our principles. The NCAA's current revenue distribution policy of provision 1 as you may know attaches significant rewards of financial aid to season success in the men's basketball tournament. Revenue earned by men's basketball teams for tournament success is awarded to that team's conference. Let me provide an example with the values of what we believe is a major problem. In the five tournaments from 2006 to 2010, teams that failed to have NCAA graduation success rates of at least 50 percent earned their conferences more than $146 million, which represented 36 percent of the total revenue distributed successfully in those tournaments. The commission believes we need to alter this incentive structure so that revenue distribution reflects our commitment to the core educational objectives. As Larry mentioned, the secretary of education Arnie Duncan, who's a former Harvard basketball student athlete has been a very strong proponent and supporter of the role of college sports. He issued a statement in support of the commission's recommendations and wrote about it in the Washington Post that "It's time the NCAA revenue distribution plan stopped handsomely rewarding success on the court with multimillion dollar payouts to schools that failed to meet minimum academic standards." To create a different incentive structure, the commission recommends creating a new fund that would be drawn from the NCAA basketball tournament monies as well as postseason BCS football. We propose that institutions be eligible for the funds if their teams have the APR scores that meet those minimum standards and if they demonstrate an appropriate balance between academic investment and athletic investment. This past April, again, to give you some ideas, just putting some dollar values to it, this past April the NCAA distributed $180 million to conferences based on the success in the men's basketball tournament. Under our recommendation, $90 million would be awarded based on tournament success and another $90 million would be awarded based on whether minimal academic standards were met. And then for those FBS institutions we are recommending reallocating 20 percent of the BCS revenues off the top that would go toward the teams that do meet these minimal academic standards. And just if that amount, the 20 percent from the basketball, 20 percent from the football, were taken to create this new revenue pool that again is tied directly to core educational value, more than $100 million would be available toward the teams this year for meeting the academic standards that our universities acknowledge as being critical to achieving its core mission. There are a number of other recommendations in the report that I really just wanted to highlight because they are quite timely given the NCAA board's directive on the policy issues that need to be altered to improve the academic outcomes for football and basketball and because of the theme of this conference in terms of influencing the strategic influence of this group. The NAACP president Benjamin Jealous, as well as other higher education leaders, the AGP board of directors, coalition of intercollegiate athletics, which is a Senate group, they've all issued statements in support of these recommendations, and with this in mind I wanted to encourage this group, the CoSIDA leadership, to do what these other groups have done, to stake your position on these very, very important policy issues so that athletic directors and presidents know what's important to this group of communication professionals. There are, as you know, within the structure of the NCAA, presidents, athletic directors, other senior administrators who are involved on various NCAA committees, and first I want you to think about that so you know who those people are within your own conference, own community. I was speaking with -- at the conferences of academic advisors and I asked for a show of hands how many were at institutions where their president was on the board of directors, and I saw a lot of not really sure, and so that's a question -- I know that you need to -- do you know the strategic influence already of individuals at your institution and how has that impacted your job? But we should use those connections and those positions of influence strategically, and now is the time to do that before things get crazy in August, ask for that meeting to sit down with your athletic director or other people who are at those leadership positions to talk about those big picture issues. There's another aspect of the commission's work that I wanted to mention briefly to this group, and that is the commission realizes that there's much more work that needs to be done on policy issues. The commission has launched a new grant program to bring new voices into the conversation. CoSIDA as a group or any of you individually or in partnership with others are invited to apply for that grant to produce original research, policy papers, multimedia content or other projects that are relevant to policies and practices in areas outlined by the commission, and there are two tiers of grants, a couple of grants up to $25,000 and others will be up to $5,000, and I can certainly get more information to you about that grant program. It's on our website. I know that many of you have a full plate as it is, so getting involved in a project to do research or multimedia content related to policy and impacting policy is not something that you can take on, but I wanted to offer that. One of the things I have observed is a disconnect say between the practitioners on the many campuses studying or teaching about college sports issues, so you can help actually bridge that gap by reaching out to those individuals who are hoping that this type of grant program as well would help encourage collaborations that would bridge that gap. The NCAA president Mark Emmert recently described Division I as hitting a crossroads on a variety of different issues. There are important big picture issues that are shaping public opinion about college sports such as whether players should receive stipends, pay for play, money over and above value of scholarships. There's obviously a growing divide between the big budget schools and the rest and the power and influence of television and shaping the landscape, and most importantly whether educational outcomes are being achieved. So again, in terms of the strategic influence this group can have to be able to meet with your senior leadership and talk about those big picture issues, and in points that are really pertinent for your local media, your beat writer, your community, your alumni to understand, there are a lot of myths out there related to some of these issues, and so it's really important that this group help to educate the public and educate others about the realities and the facts related to these issues. For example, we were just talking about the flood of stories and commentaries related to pay for play and what the impact of those types of things have when you read stories of Steve Spurrier's examples saying a football player should be paid $300 a game and what the reality of something like that would be. One of the questions I would ask this group is when you have a flood of stories like that, how many of you are educating reporters about the NCAA's annual student assistance fund, which is actually $59 million attributed back to the schools to help with educational expenses. And I brought this up to a group of administrators who were actually surprised to find out at their conference they were not fully extended that money on an annual basis. So that's a real example of an area where there's been a lot of stories. It's a really critical and important policy issue that needs to be thoughtfully discussed with what the realities are and whether that $59 million fund is enough, does it need to be more or is that the appropriate mechanism to address some of these issues, but again, to educate the community, the media and also alumni and the community supporters about what the realities are. CoSIDA has been a real leader in recognizing the educational values and providing athletes and students really one of the best learning laboratories on campus. It's essential that this group of professionals that is so firmly committed to the educational objectives of college sports play a leadership role in policy direction and educating the public and reinforcing the core values. The public is increasingly bombarded with stories that treat college sports as a new MTV reality show. The ability of each of you in working with others is essential to break through this wave of messages and to really shine a bright light on the true essence of college sports, one that values the core educational objectives first and foremost. I want to thank you again for allowing me this platform to talk with you today to share some ideas, and I will be here at the conference today and tomorrow, be glad to talk with you more about some of these issues, but again, I want to thank you first for really inspiring me as a young athlete for the awards and the recognitions you've created for the Academic All-America program that means so much to the athletes while they're there and then obviously mean so much as they reflect back on their careers. And thank you for recognizing me as a professional committed to our shared values when I was inducted in the Academic All-America Hall of Fame. And then lastly, thank you for recognizing me as a colleague by inviting me here to share these ideas and thoughts with you today. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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