Knight Commission


The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, often referred to simply as the Knight Commission, is a panel of American academic, athletic and sports leaders, with an eye toward reform of college athletics, particularly in regard to emphasizing academic values and policies that ensure athletic programs operate within the educational missions of their universities.
The commission was founded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which was itself founded by brothers John S. Knight and James L. Knight, members of the founding family of what became the Knight Ridder newspaper and broadcasting chain. The commission first met in 1989 after a series of scandals in college sports. The founding co-chairmen of the commission were Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame, and William C. Friday, former president of the University of North Carolina.
Currently, the commission serves as a leadership group which seeks to reform college sports, primarily by promoting policies that prioritize athletes’ education, health, safety and success. As an independent commission, it has no official connection to governing bodies such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the primary sanctioning body for college sports in the United States, or any government agencies. But because of its blue ribbon panel and high profile within the news media, the commission's work carries considerable influence within college sports as a whole. Since its inception, the NCAA has adopted a number of Commission recommendations, particularly those that strengthened academic standards.

First report: ''Keeping Faith with the Student Athlete''

The commission issued its groundbreaking report, Keeping Faith with the Student Athlete: A New Model for Intercollegiate Athletics, in 1991. In the report, the Knight Commission proposed a major overhaul in the way colleges run their athletic departments, proposing what it called the “one-plus-three” model — in which the “one,” control by the college president, is directed toward the “three” goals of academic integrity, financial integrity and independent certification. The report was influential in the implementation of many reforms by the NCAA, including a major restructuring within the NCAA itself, when in 1996 the governance of the association was taken away from college athletic directors and put into the hands of college presidents.

Second report: ''A Call to Action''

In 2001, the commission issued its second major report, largely detailing what had transpired in the ten years since Keeping Faith was issued. A Call to Action: Reconnecting College Sports and Higher Education reiterated almost all of the original report's recommendations, while taking note that roughly two-thirds of the reforms recommended in Keeping Faith had been implemented to one degree or another.
One notable recommendation in A Call to Action was that the NCAA restrict participation in postseason to teams whose graduation rate is 50 percent or greater, a concept that influenced the development of NCAA academic policies and, ultimately, its 2011 adoption of an academic threshold for postseason competition.

Third report: ''Restoring the Balance''

The Knight Commission’s third report Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values, and the Future of College Sports was released in 2010. It calls for strengthening accountability through transparency, rewarding practices that make academics a priority, and treating athletes as students first.
The Commission reemphasized a central recommendation in its 2001 report that teams be required to be on track to graduate at last half of their players to be eligible for postseason competition. The NCAA voted to adopt this proposal in October 2011 using a metric the NCAA created in 2004 to project graduation rates based on eligibility and retention.
The report also recommended that a portion of the NCAA financial incentives reward academic outcomes. The NCAA adopted changes to its revenue distribution formula in 2016 to reward academic outcomes.
Financial data in the report revealed that athletics spending and subsidies provided by most FBS institutions to their athletics budgets are rising more quickly than educational budgets. This, together with opinions from a 2009 “Presidential Survey on the Cost and Financing of Intercollegiate Athletics,” underscored the Commission's urgency to address the escalating costs of college sports through collaborative measures, which require support from presidents, NCAA leadership, university boards of trustees and conferences across the country.

Current work

The Knight Commission’s efforts to provide greater financial transparency in college sports also led to the NCAA changing its annual financial report at the Commission’s request in order to require separate reporting for bonuses paid to college football coaches for postseason appearances and wins; Prior NCAA changes to the report had masked the full bonus compensation paid to FBS football coaches by including bonuses with all postseason expenses.
In 2018, the Knight Commission proposed several reforms to The Commission on College Basketball, led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – which was formed in response to the 2017 college basketball scandal. The Rice Commission advanced a longstanding Knight Commission recommendation to add independent directors to the NCAA Board of Governors, the organization’s highest-ranking governing body. The following year, the NCAA implemented this recommendation, adding five independent members to its board.
In 2019, the Commission revamped its free College Athletics Financial Information Database, providing detailed financial information on athletics revenues at over 220 public NCAA Division I colleges and universities, dating back to 2005. The database has been used in many national sports stories examining money in college sports.
In April 2020, the Knight Commission recommended five principles to guide the development of policies that will allow college athletes to earn compensation for the use of their name, image and likeness. A few weeks later the NCAA’s proposed new NIL rules aligned with several of the Commission’s proposed principles. The Knight Commission also released an educational video, “An Introduction to Name, Image and Likeness Rules for College Athletes,” narrated by Commission member David Robinson and fellow former college sports star Elizabeth Beisel.

Current commission members and staff

As of 2020, the commission's co-chairs are Arne Duncan, former U.S. Secretary of Education, and Carol Cartwright, President Emeritus, Kent State University and Bowling Green State University. The commission's CEO is Amy Privette Perko, who previously worked as team president of the Fayetteville Patriots ; Associate Athletics Director/Senior Women Administrator at the University of Kansas; and NCAA enforcement representative.
Other better-known members: