| | By Andy Katz
ESPN.com
The NCAA delivered on its promise of putting together a basketball issues committee with members who actually have a stake in the sport.
NCAA Board of Directors chair Graham Spanier, president of Penn
State, announced the 16-person standing men's committee (there is also a
16-person women's committee) Thursday that will include head coaches Mike
Krzyzewski (Duke), Tubby Smith (Kentucky), Ernie Kent (Oregon), Lorenzo
Romar (Saint Louis) and Phil Mathews (San Francisco).
Last year's 27-member group studying basketball did not include a single active men's basketball coach.
The rest of the new committee has college personnel with direct ties to the sport. Jim Delaney, the Big Ten athletics director and outspoken advocate of change, is on the committee with Syracuse chancellor and chair of the committee, Kenneth "Buzz" Shaw. Shaw led last year's committee, which failed to offer any significant change in
the sport after months of meetings.
Kansas athletics director Bob Federick, who is at a school where
basketball comes first, is also a high-profile member of the committee.
The diversity, at least in terms of mid- to low-majors, is representated with the
selection of Butler athletics director John Parry, Big Sky commissioner Doug
Fullerton, Penn athletics director Steven Bilsky, Southern athletics director
Floyd Kerr and Mid-Continent commissioner Jon Steinbrecher. Tulsa president
Bob Lawless, who has been an active supporter and follower of the game, was
the other university president named to the new committee.
Two student-athletes will be added to the committee at a later date.
"I'm very pleased with the makeup of the committee," Spanier said
in a statement. "This is one of the NCAA's most important initiatives in
recent years, and we have appointed a blue-ribbon group to follow up on the
Board's earlier actions. An overriding concern for us was putting together a
committee that fairly represented the basketball constituency of Division I.
It is important that all voices are heard."
NCAA president Cedric Dempsey said last Friday in Indianapolis that
the committee would meet in October and tackle the most pressing issue in
men's basketball -- summer recruiting. The NCAA, which held meetings last Thursday and Friday on the subject in Indianapolis, will forward a summer-long report to the committee in September.
The basketball issues committee could forward proposals for floor discussion at the NCAA convention in January. The management council could vote on legislation in
April of 2001 with the board of directors offering a final vote in October
2001 for the summer of 2002.
The NCAA has cut down recruiting from 24 to 14 evaluating days in
the summer of 2001. Dempsey said a new model for summer recruiting will be
in place for the summer of 2002.
The committee not only features representatives from high-, mid- and low-major schools, it is also ethnically diverse, including both black and white head coaches. The belief if that such diversity will allow everyone's concerns to be heard. By adding a coach with the stature of Krzyzewski, as well as a rising star like Romar, the NCAA has ensured that all voices and needs will be heard, blending time-tested ideas with new ones.
The majority of Division I schools need the summer to evaluate in order to recruit. The National Association of Basketball Coaches is adamently opposed to eliminating summer recruiting.
The NCAA wants to put recruiting back in the hands of the high school coach and guardian, rather than the summer coach. To do that, Krzyzewski said coaches need more access, not less, with players, especially in their junior years.
The committee is expected to look at altering the academic year recruiting calendar as well as the summer.
Andy Katz is a senior writer for ESPN.com. | |
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