Leading members of the college athletics community, including NCAA President Myles Brand, will discuss some of the major issues facing college sports during a symposium Wednesday, Sept. 6 on the Elon campus. Details...
University of Maryland Athletics Director and Elon trustee Deborah Yow and Frank Haith, head men’s basketball coach at the University of Miami, both Elon alumni, will join Brand and Joe Crowley, former president of the University of Nevada at Reno and author of the 2006 book “In the Arena: The NCAA’s First Century,” for the three-part symposium. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the School of Communications. UNC-TV will provide live coverage of all symposium sessions on its UNC-NC digital multicast service.
The first session, titled “The Past: The History of College Athletics,” will take place from 11 a.m. to noon in Whitley Auditorium. Crowley will look back at the birth of the NCAA in 1906 as the regulatory body of college athletics. He will examine the issues the NCAA has faced through the years, such as the increased influence of television on college athletics and the initiation of national championships.
The next session is titled “The Present: The NCAA and College Athletics Today.” From 1:45 p.m. to 2:45 p.m., in Whitley Auditorium, Brand will address current topics in college sports, including Title IX, gender equity, the elimination of Native American mascots, recruiting practices and the financing of college athletics.
A panel discussion titled “The Future of College Athletics” from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in McCrary Theatre will conclude the symposium. Brand, Haith and Yow will respond to questions from Crowley to share their thoughts on the future direction of college sports.
Brand became the first university president to lead the NCAA in 2003. He previously served as president of Indiana University and the University of Oregon. Brand gained national attention in September 2000 when he fired longtime Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight.
He has addressed the problems of over-commercialization, poor graduation rates and questionable academic standards used for athletes. Brand has presided over passage of the most comprehensive academic reform package for intercollegiate athletics in recent history.
Crowley served as president at the University of Nevada, Reno from 1978 to 2001, the longest tenure of any university president in the state’s history, and also served as interim president in 2005-2006. He served on the board of The Collegiate Woman Sports Award and the executive committee of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports. His new book, “In the Arena: The NCAA’s First Century,” chronicles the organization’s history since its formation in 1906 in the wake of numerous college football injuries and fatalities.
Yow graduated from Elon in 1974. She has served as director of athletics at the University of Maryland, College Park since 1994. During her tenure, Maryland teams have won 12 national championships. Yow has served as president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics and has served on the NCAA Management Council. She was honored in 2004 by Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal as one of the 20 most influential people in intercollegiate athletics. She received Elon’s Young Alumnus of the Year Award in 1985 and gave Elon’s commencement address in 2003. She joined the Elon University Board of Trustees this year.
A 1988 Elon graduate, Haith spent one season as an assistant coach with the Elon men’s basketball team before serving as an assistant coach at Wake Forest University, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Penn State University, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas. In 2004, he was named head coach at the University of Miami (Fla.). Haith’s teams posted winning records during his first two seasons with the Hurricanes.
UNC-NC is UNC-TV’s digital multicast channel devoted to programming for and about North Carolina. The UNC-NC program service is available through a free over-the-air broadcast signal to everyone in North Carolina who has a digital television receiver and to digital cable subscribers on: Time Warner Cable in the Triangle, Charlotte, Triad and Wilmington areas; Cox Cable in Rocky Mount, Greenville, and New Bern areas; Lexcon Cable in the Lexington area; and Charter Cable in the Asheville, Hickory and Boone areas.