Sports Governance To Host Public Discussion On Athletics, Academics

BOULDER — With Monday night's NCAA Championship game still fresh in the public eye, the CU Athletics Sports Governance Center will host a public panel discussion entitled "Are Big-Time College Athletics Compatible With Academics?" on Thursday at 7 p.m.

The event will be held on the third floor of the Champions Center in the Petry Auditorium. Admission for the event, part of the SGC's Distinguished Lecture series, is free.

Panel members will include University of North Carolina professor Jay Smith, Arizona State instructor Victoria Jackson, CU associate athletic director for student services Kris Livingston, CU faculty athletics representative and professor Joe Jupille, and CU head men's basketball coach Tad Boyle.

Smith, along with Mary Willingham, is the author of "Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports." He was also part of the UNC faculty response to the "paper class" scandal at North Carolina.

Jackson, a former NCAA 10K champion, is completing a book entitled, "Justice and Injustice in American Intercollegiate Athletics."

Livingston heads the CU Athletics group in charge of academics for CU varsity athletes while Jupille, as Colorado's FAR, is responsible for "oversight of the academic integrity of the athletic program and serving as an advocate for student-athlete well-being."

Boyle, who just finished his eighth season as CU's head coach, has graduated every CU senior student-athlete on his roster (25) since his arrival in Boulder.

The CU Sports Governance Center is headed by Prof. Roger Pielke, and it includes an Intro to Sports Governance class. The class studies and discusses a wide variety of issues regarding sports, ranging from performance-enhancing drugs to NCAA issues to gender controversies. It is also quickly becoming known for its prominent speakers and public lecture series, a list that has included cyclist Lance Armstrong, NCAA executive Oliver Luck, and Yuliya Stepanova, a former Russian athlete who helped blow the whistle on her country's extensive doping program.

It is one of the only academic centers housed within an athletic department in the United States.

In a blog post, Pielke said, "The goal for the evening is educational, with a wide-ranging and open discussion of these challenging and important issues. … It is intentionally provocative and ideally we will have some debate as well as conversation. In the unlikely event that we do not solve all the problems of college athletics, I'd like the audience to go away with a deeper and perhaps more sophisticated understanding of the challenges, issues, opportunities."

More information on the Sports Governance Center can be found here.