With two of college basketball's model student-athletes, David Robinson and Grant Hill, sitting closest to her, Condoleezza Rice laid out a future of the sport that looks to eliminate the type of malfeasance that attracted a federal investigation while maintaining its amateur structure.
The Rice-led Commission on College Basketball took on the NBA and its players' union, AAU basketball and the NCAA for contributing to "a crisis in college basketball (that) is foremost a problem of failed accountability and lax responsibility," Rice said.
In a speech at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis, Rice said the vast majority of schools play by the rules but a "win at all costs" approach by others who have been inadequately punished must be changed.
No schools were mentioned, but two FBI reports, one in September and another in April, have identified recruiting practices that violate NCAA rules involving prospects who wound up at several schools, including Kansas.
Will these recommendations aimed at cleaning up the sport address the basic problem amplified by the federal investigation: Money exchanging hands to gain influence with top prospects or their families?
It happens because the value of prospects by agents, apparel companies and schools is greater than scholarships and other small streams of revenue permitted by the NCAA.
With money pouring into colleges in the major conferences from sources such as media-rights contracts and postseason games, many get rich on athletics, except those generating the revenue _ the athletes, when they arrive on campus and as top-rated prospects.
The Commission has recommended more NCAA control on non-scholastic basketball, harsher penalties for coaches and schools that violate rules and asks for the cooperation of other organizations with a stake in college basketball, like the NBA.
But is anything short of restructuring a market that weighs decidedly against the athletes enough to stop illegal recruiting practices and keep the feds out of the game?
The FBI investigation spurred the NCAA into forming the Rice Commission, which issued a 60-page report that focused on several areas:
