NCAA President Brand hopes to control spending

INDIANAPOLIS -- National Collegiate Athletic Association President Myles Brand has been a reformer from the start. Now he is taking on perhaps his biggest challenge: containing costs.\nAfter two years at the NCAA's helm, Brand has put most of his academic agenda in motion. He has focused on making schools more accountable for graduation rates, for keeping student-athletes eligible, for making sure they admit students who can be successful in college classes.\nBringing costs under control won't be easy.\n"What's happened these last six or eight years is that the rate of expenditures is increasing more quickly in athletics than in other parts of the university," he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "It needs to resemble the rest of the university."\nBrand insists he is not out to slash athletic department budgets. And he can't legislate change because antitrust laws don't allow the NCAA to regulate how universities spend their money. The organization learned that the hard way in 1998 when it lost $54.5 million in a lawsuit involving entry-level assistant coaches, whose salaries were capped by the NCAA at $16,000 annually.\nInstead, success will hinge on changing the hearts and minds of college administrators -- something Brand will attempt when the NCAA convention opens Friday in Dallas.