It was not about disbanding sports, it’s all about expansion. If we just let it continue, we’ll have a billion-dollar athletic enterprise that owns us, the university and all the academic departments. It is supposed to be the other way around athletics as a support arm of the university.”

Those are the words of James Earl, president of the Oregon faculty senate, regarding his effort to rally the support of the Oregon faculty to press the university to reaffirm academics first over a football program Earl and others viewed as growing too big. All faculty senate members signed.

The debate is not new and is argued in many facets. Should college athletes be paid? How much should TV dictate college schedules and travel? How much money is too much spent on college sports? How much under-the-table goodies are going to college athletes? Who’s really running college sports; the athletes, the athletic directors, the university presidents?

The latest forum for the discussion of college sports is the academic community on campuses. Faculties at a number of universities, including the Big 10 and Pac 10 Conferences, are moving to reign in the growth of big-time college sports. Last week they gained the support of the Association of Governing Boards and Universities and Colleges. These are the trustees of college institutions and they deal with the money.

The latter group has invited Big 10 representatives and the NCAA to their meeting in April.

“We have witnessed a situation where the tail is wagging the dog and the only way change will come is if the American public begins to understand that we have crossed the line,” said Tom Ingram, president of the boards’ association.

What makes the current effort intriguing is the support it has from the new president of the NCAA, former University of Indiana president Myles Brand, the same Brand who fired basketball coach Bobby Knight. Brand has gone on record, supporting moves by the NCAA to toughen academic requirements of athletes in both high school core requirements and semester-by-semester progress in college.

Joe Castiglione, president of the National AD’s Association, has said any such changes “should be engineered through the structure that exists on campus.”

The athletic directors do not want to lose their control over sports, control that has expanded dramatically at major sports schools because of the money involved, largely from television revenue.

For the new alliance of academics, that is just the problem. They have raised the issue of sports transcending academics before and been told by the athletic directors not to worry. They are worrying now and do not believe the athletic directors can or want to deal with the issue.

Television will be a major player in this matter. Any effort to reign in college sports could include scheduling. Television lives and dies by ratings. Television is forever and endlessly arguing with colleges about what games it wants played and when in order to attract the largest audience possible.

The more schools have complied with such requests, the bigger the dollar payoffs. The academicians are saying enough.

This should be a humdinger of a matchup: the faculty and holders of the purse strings vs. the coaches and athletic directors. How TV wishes they could televise this one in primetime.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.