Do you remember being a little kid in elementary school and whenever the important people in the school district would come to visit, everyone would be lectured about being on their best behavior? The UB Athletics Program finds itself subtly giving the same message right now.
A team of people from the NCAA will be visiting Buffalo from Nov. 5-8 to conclude a yearlong self-study to determine if UB complies with NCAA rules.
In order to insure the integrity of all NCAA institution's athletics programs, universities are required to complete the self-study every five years. The study is not done by people from the athletics department, but rather from outside members of the university staff.
Four different sub-committees are formed in order to study specific areas of the athletics programs' compliance, with the Steering Committee overseeing each individual committee. The Steering Committee then writes the final report for the NCAA's peer review team.
Subcommittees for the self-study are the Governance and Commitment to Rules Compliance Subcommittee, the Academic Integrity Subcommittee, the Fiscal Integrity Subcommittee, and the Equity, Welfare and Sportsmanship Subcommittee. Each of these committees give individual reports about their specific areas which are brought together to make the final report.
Although some plans for improvement were made, the committees found that, "UB has demonstrated an extremely strong commitment to establishing an athletics program which not only strives for competitive excellence, but one which also continually strives for excellence in its governance, finances, academics, and commitment to the diversity and welfare of all of its student-athletes."
Now the UB Athletic Department awaits the peer review team's arrival this week.
The peer review team consists of six people from various schools who will come in to determine if UB's self-study report is accurate. The review team will spend its three days here talking to student athletes, reviewing records, touring facilities, and conducting interviews.
"In a nut shell they are coming in here to see if what we wrote is accurate, they can verify it, that we had broad based participation, and that we did a thorough self-study," said Laura Barnum, assistant athletics director for business operations and project manager.
Although it is possible that the peer review team would find Buffalo not in compliance with NCAA standards, the probability of that is extremely low. The Buffalo Steering Committee did a thorough job, and found UB to be substantially in compliance, and for the review team to find that Buffalo was not in compliance would mean that, "the Steering Committee had not done its job," according to Barnum.
After the review team's visit, a report will be sent to the NCAA's Committee on Athletics Certification and UB will find out about its certification sometime in January 2003.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
