WASHINGTON — Researchers who spent more than a year studying how the National Collegiate Athletic Association can navigate the often-perilous divide between athletics and academics offered advice Tuesday on transforming board policies, realigning university and athletic department values, and adjusting the distribution of finances.

“We need boards to be more aware, more engaged,” said Richard Legon, co-author of one of the six studies funded by the Knight Commission, an intercollegiate athletics watchdog.

The six studies were commissioned in May 2011, prior to several high-profile athletic scandals.  Each research group focused on a particular aspect of college sports culture and management, shedding light on the changes that still have yet to occur in university athletic departments.

Legon and co-author John Casteen investigated the structure, policies and procedures of college governing boards.  In a survey of 143 university presidents, nearly 25 percent indicated the school’s governing board lacks a policy outlining the board’s responsibilities.

“This is a larger story of accountability,” Legon said.  Without clear policies, a board could simply pick and choose what they oversee, instead of realizing they are responsible for the entire university community, he said.

Advice on boards

Legon and Casteen offered three principles to guide board structure:

1. The governing board is ultimately accountable for athletics policy and oversight and should fulfill this fiduciary responsibility.
2. The board should act decisively to uphold the integrity of the athletics program and its alignment with the academic mission of the institution.
3. The board must educate itself about its policy role and oversight of intercollegiate athletics.

While Legon emphasized the need to clearly define a board’s role, he was reluctant to offer more specific recommendations than those outlined in his study.

“Our association is not trying to come out with a one-size fits all policy model,” he said.  “That would be impractical.  Every institution has its own specific situations to address.”

A question of values

One situation affecting many schools is the disparate value systems among university departments.  Two assistant professors at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Coyte Cooper and Erianne Weight, examined what values are paramount in the athletics departments.  In their survey, 8 percent of coaches and 16 percent of administrators reported winning trumps values at their school.

Plus 41 percent of coaches and 29 percent of administrators believed university practices contradicted the school’s touted values.

The perceived disparity is why “governance can’t just stop at the water’s edge of intercollegiate athletics,” Legon said.

“Change is going to be difficult,” Cooper said. “There are athletic directors who want to do the right thing.  Now is the perfect time.”

Yet doing the right thing can come at a high price.  The salaries of athletic directors and coaches often include bonus clauses for winning division titles and appearing in bowl games.

The financing of sports programs is setup as a “winner take all market,” said John Cheslock, who investigated how money influences the dynamics of athletic departments with co-author David Knight.

According to the study, even elite athletic programs fail to yield revenue.  “This would not necessarily be a problem if it was a rosy time in higher education,” said Cheslock, who also serves as director of Penn State University’s Center of the Study of Higher Education.

Without systemic change, the financial burden of tuition will continue to mount, he said.

Cheslock and Knight recommend altering the distribution of revenue in the athletic department, limiting high-revenue programs from setting spending norms, and separating high-revenue and low-revenue programs to prevent low-revenue programs from overspending.

Aimed for improvement

The goal of all six research projects is to improve intercollegiate athletics, said Knight Commission co-chair William ‘Brit’ Kirwin.

In response to the Knight Commision reports, the NCAA said in a statement: “Many of the recommendations regarding the NCAA are already under consideration by the NCAA members and leaders.”

Historically, the Knight Commission encouraged greater financial transparency among athletic programs and a stronger emphasis on education for student-athletes.  The NCAA adopted new procedures based on these earlier reports, but putting them into practice often takes years.

“They sometimes listen to us, they sometimes don’t,” Kirwin said.  After a year of scandal upon scandal, it may be time to listen.