FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
from THE COALITION ON INTERCOLLEGIATE
ATHLETICS (COIA)
30 October 2006
The Steering Committee
of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) welcomes the release of
the NCAA Presidential Task Force report, "The Second Century Imperatives:
President Leadership - Institutional Accountability.” We appreciate the effort
of all the task force presidents and others involved in the preparation of the
report, and would like to specifically acknowledge the leadership of the Task
Force Chair, Dr. Peter Likins, former
President of the
While articulating the
strengths of the intercollegiate athletic model, the report identifies critical
problems and formulates an ambitious agenda to address them. Many of the steps it proposes are reasonable
and practical. The major suggestions in
the report - that university presidents exert strong campus leadership on
athletic issues, that all intercollegiate athletics events, activities and
actions adhere to institutional academic values and principles, that faculty be
an integral part of governing the campus
intercollegiate enterprise, and that uniform practices and fiscal
transparency be adopted by athletic departments - are strongly endorsed by
COIA.
The COIA membership,
over fifty university faculty senates, stands willing to work closely with
their individual campus presidents, directors of athletics, other faculty
leaders, and the NCAA to implement proposals in the Presidential Task Force
report and formulate further steps to resolve the longstanding problems that
have undermined the values of intercollegiate sports.
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This statement has been approved by
the Steering Committee of the Coalition on Intercollegiate
Athletics (http://www.neuro.uoregon.edu/~tublitz/COIA/SC.html)
For more information on COIA, please
consult our website at http://www.neuro.uoregon.edu/~tublitz/COIA/index.html).
Contacts:
COIA Co-Chairs: Virginia Shepherd (Vanderbilt; shephev@aol.com)
Nathan Tublitz (