CLEVELAND---In a speech before the City Club of Cleveland, NCAA President Myles Brand today announced creation of a Presidential Task Force on the Future of Intercollegiate Athletics.

"This is the next step in a systematic process of integrating athletics into the academic mission of colleges and universities,” Brand told his audience.  “I am delighted that a group of senior leaders from a broad spectrum of institutions have recognized the value of athletics to higher education and the need to address a variety of challenges for the future.”

Brand and University of Arizona President Peter Likins, a member of the Division I Board of Directors, met with a group of two dozen presidents and chancellors during the recent NCAA Convention in Dallas to discuss issues surrounding the alignment of athletics and academics, including fiscal responsibility, competitive equity, transparency and most importantly the value and values of intercollegiate athletics.

Likins will chair the task force, which is similar in its role to a presidential group that studied and made recommendations leading to the academic reform package approved by the Board of Directors last April.

"The popularity of intercollegiate athletics and the media exposure it receives has steadily pushed the enterprise toward sports entertainment and away from education mission of colleges and universities,” Likins said.  “There is a gnawing concern for damaging our value system within higher education. We recognize the value of the learning experience enjoyed by student-athletes in intercollegiate athletics competition, that we must balance the benefits of that human experience with the benefits that flow from academic learning and college graduation.”

The task force is expected to complete its work in 18 to 24 months and will likely receive input from an advisory panel representing college and university governing boards.  Two such representatives attended the meeting called by Likins and Brand at the NCAA Convention.

"Let me be clear.  There is no looming crisis to which this group must attend,” Brand said in a letter to college and university presidents informing them of the task force.  “Rather, this will be the exercise of prudent leadership to address trends that if left unattended could undermine the goals of higher education and damage the collegiate model of athletics.”

The makeup of the task force has not been completed but will be announced when it is finalized.

"It is a testimony to the critical nature of these issues that a group of presidents with busy schedules and complex campuses to run would agree to take on this effort,” said Kent State University President Carol Cartwright, chair of the NCAA Executive Committee and a participant in the Dallas meeting.  “The emerging theme is the intersection of finance and values.  We will be looking for tools that will help us analyze that intersection and suggest responses.”

A timetable for meetings will be announced in the near future.