Click on the Zoom link below to register for the COIA 2021 National Meeting! Space is limited so sign up today!

Zoom link:
https://uasystem.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcod–trTosEtbh_1Dz6FtECvDx8pD4z0Y1

The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) is an alliance of faculty senates and councils from public and private universities from NCAA Division I schools. Our mission is to provide a national faculty voice on intercollegiate sports issues. As faculty, we are committed to promoting academic excellence, integrity, and the health and safety of all of our student-athletes across our great universities. Our core values are centered on Student-Athletes as Students First, and we support the NCAA programs that promote our core values. COIA continues to closely monitor the NIL issue to promote outcomes in the best interests of all student-athletes. We are opposed to outside compensation for student-athletes, and we think that entertaining ideas such as payment for their name, image, and likeness (NIL) will serve to greatly erode the concept of amateur athletics at the college level. Such compensation will create unfair advantages among schools that cannot be mitigated and will lead to improper recruiting and transfer inducements that cannot be prevented. It is also likely that student-athletes will be unfairly burdened with complex and difficult choices related to prioritizing financial gain over-commitment to academic achievement. We believe that exploring compromises that would support NIL payments will eventually lead to direct payments to players for their athletic performance. We urge the NCAA to support Student-Athletes as Students First and not adopt a system for compensating student athletes for their name, image and likeness.

The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA; the Coalition) is an alliance of faculty senates from NCAA Division I schools. COIA’s mission is to provide a national faculty voice on intercollegiate sports issues. Areas of concern include academic integrity and quality, student-athlete welfare, campus governance of intercollegiate athletics, commercialization, and fiscal responsibility. The Coalition is committed to the development of effective strategies and proposals for significant, long-term reform in college athletics. COIA works with university faculties, administrations, and national associations concerned with higher education, to implement these strategies and proposals.

Currently, Division I schools that have faculty senates are eligible to be members of COIA. During the past several years, COIA has produced a number of white papers and other documents that lay out recommendations for reform. These recommendations offer best practices that can be used by schools to examine their own policies and practices with regard to intercollegiate athletics. Many of these recommendations have also been discussed with the NCAA as possible action items.

The faculty governance body of any NCAA Division I school can be a member of COIA (see How to Join COIA). We are an ad hoc group and operate without a staff or budget. Our direction is determined by our member senates, and we warmly welcome any NCAA Division I senate that votes to join the COIA on the basis of a general agreement with the principles laid out in our policy papers and reports.