[D]ozens of faculty, including senior members and department chairs, agree generally that athletics at Duke have been exalted beyond their true measure.

…"My own feeling [says a member of the faculty group] is that college sports has grown into a very big commercial, entertainment business with literally billions of dollars at stake, and TV contracts and coaching salaries and recruiting, and I think that's wrong."

Duke athletics pulled in about $42 million in revenues for the year ended October 2005 and spent about $2 million less than that, according to reports filed with the U.S. Department of Education. Men's basketball accounted for more than $12 million of that income, with $7.4 million in expenses. Football's $9.3 million in expenses contributed to a net loss in that sport of about $1.6 million.

…The discussion may have additional urgency at Duke because of the lacrosse scandal, but it's one taking place on campuses across the nation, said Eugene Tobin, program officer for liberal arts programs at the Andrew Mellon Foundation and director of the College Sports Project, a consortium of 130 Division III colleges and universities dedicated to integrating sports programs with other collegiate activities and values.

College sports, like much of the rest of education, have become more specialized, Tobin said.

"So what we're talking about ... is trying to take an entity like athletics, which has grown in many cases to be almost semiautonomous in its relationship to the rest of the institution, and try to re-conceptualize how it can play a positive role, a complementary role, but with all sides focused on the totality of a student's experience," he said.