CLEVELAND, Miss. - With nine national championships, 36 regional championships and 61 Gulf South Conference titles, the tradition of Delta State Athletics has been heavily rooted in the GSC and NCAA across DSU's 81 years of athletic competition. While coaches, athletes, and athletic staff put in countless hours to ensure DSU sticks to its slogan of being "a university of champions," a university is nothing without outstanding faculty serving to educate students for life off the field and advocating for their benefits.
 
Faculty athletics representatives serve an important role in the athletic community, bridging the gap between sports and education. As one of the founding members of NCAA Division II, Delta State has been instrumental in establishing the role of faculty athletics representatives.
 
The faculty athletics representative (FAR) serves as a liaison between the athletic and academic communities. The FAR is a faculty member at an NCAA member institution appointed by the institution and serves as the institution's representative at conference and NCAA meetings.
 
Even before the term FAR was coined, faculty have had a longstanding role in the history of the NCAA. According to the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association, faculty have had input in the NCAA since 1928 as stated in the Carnegie Foundation Report on American College Athletics. The Ramer Report published in 1980 outlined significant contributions of faculty members in the NCAA. After the Ramer Report was published, the NCAA published the first faculty athletics representative's handbook.
 
The FAR is an integral link to the athletic and academic communities on a college campus, and Delta State President Emeritus, Dr. Kent Wyatt, recalled the role Delta State had in the creating the position of FAR. 
 
"I had been going to the NCAA annual meetings for the last five years since I had been assistant to the president," Wyatt said. "I was assistant to the president five years before I became president, so I knew what they were wanting and were asking for."
 
Wyatt appointed Dr. Milton Bradley, a former chemistry professor, as Delta State's first faculty athletics representative—a role Bradley served in for many decades.
 
"I wanted someone that was well respected by the faculty, and I wanted someone who had a good athletic background and was not prone to just one sport but who would encompass the need of all the different sports at Delta State," Wyatt said. "Also, I wanted someone that would be there a while. I didn't want to appoint a new person every year primarily because I felt like continuity in that position was very important … so that person could develop relationships and represent Delta State on various committees of the NCAA and Gulf South Conference, and Dr. Bradley fit that build perfectly."
 
Bradley became a member of the Delta State athletic committee in 1973. At that time, the university did not have a faculty athletics representative. The athletic committee at Delta State collaborated with the athletic director and was involved in the screening and hiring of new coaches.
 
"I cannot remember exactly when they started calling it Faculty Athletics Representative to the NCAA," Bradley said. "When we formed the (Gulf South) Conference, we did not have any constitution bylaws, so the presidents asked the faculty representatives, or the ones going to the conference meets, to investigate what we needed to do to get constitutional bylaws.
 
"As it turns out, three of us took it upon ourselves to write the entire constitutional bylaws of the Gulf South Conference. Dr. John Leg at Mississippi College, Dr. Brown at Southeast Louisiana, and I just took sections, and then we would get together and finally came up with what we called the constitution bylaws. We looked at other conferences that had been established to see what had been done. We got it, and it was approved as presented. Then it took years of amending to get it to where it was a good document."
 
Bradley's involvement in the GSC extended to the NCAA as he was one of the first FARs to handle initial eligibility. In the mid-70s, the academic standards for initial eligibility for incoming freshman were a 2.0 GPA and a 15 ACT score.  
 
"We formed a committee in the NCAA made up of representatives from what we then called DI, DII, DIII," Bradley recalled. "Dr. Green at Livingston was on the NCAA council, and Dr. Wyatt became a member of that council, and they wanted the GSC to have a representative on the initial eligibility committee in the NCAA. They asked if I would serve, and I did."
 
As a member of the initial eligibility committee, Bradley helped draft the new eligibility requirements.
 
"The NCAA did research all over on how student athletes perform once they started playing, and they found there were a lot of grade point averages right at 2.0, and they thought that's really not high enough, so let's raise it up to 2.5 and they did," Bradley said. "Once it got to 2.5, we found the same thing happening. Now those people were making 2.5 instead of 2.0, and they increased it to 18 on the ACT. Those were the initial requirements for eligibility for freshmen to participate." 
 
Even in the 1970s, the NCAA had several student athletes from overseas. International student-athletes still had to pass the ACT to be eligible for competition. Bradley suggested international student athletes should be required to take the ACT in English, not in their native language, and that's eventually what the NCAA agreed to.
 
In addition to serving on the initial eligibility committee, Bradley also had a role in the in the NCAA's initiative to restructure the organization into three separate divisions. Delta State was one of the founding members of NCAA DII, and Bradley recalled his involvement on behalf of DSU.
 
"They formed a task force to study this restructure, and I was placed on the management team task force for Division two," he said.
 
Bradley said it took about two to three years to complete the restructuring of the NCAA, and after that, they formed a permanent management council. He was one of the founding members of the initial management council in 1997.
 
"As a member of that management council, I was on various committees," Bradley said. "I was chairman each year of a different committee. I was chairman of the Division II Committee on Infractions, and we met as often as needed to consider infractions of other Division II schools, and we set the penalty for infractions."
 
In 2002, Bradley retired from Delta State, and former professor and chair of mathematics, Dr. Rose Strahan, was appointed as Delta State's faculty athletics representative in 2003, where she served for six years before retiring in 2009.
 
"You are the liaison between the athletic department and the faculty, so you need to be very aware of that role that you need to play," Strahan said in describing her role as FAR. "I also felt a big responsibility all the time to be aware of what was going on in athletics and to support them in any way I could. I already was going to all the games, so that helped some."
 
Her main responsibility was to sign scholarship and eligibility forms, meet with recruitments on campus, be aware of conference regulations and attend Gulf South Conference and NCAA meetings. However, she also felt a responsibility to attend athletic events and support student athletes as much as possible.
 
"I felt like the faculty rep was supposed to be supportive and be there," Strahan said. "For years, I went to every football game regardless of where it was. I had some friends that traveled with me, and we just went wherever the team was going. I've been to the baseball world series a couple of times. Some of those things I still really like to do, if I have the time."
 
While attending athletic events, signing scholarship and eligibility forms, and attending FAR meetings still remain a large part of a FAR's responsibilities, one of the greatest responsibilities of a FAR is to serve as an advocate for student athletes. 

"Most of the FARs will tell you that their main role is advocating for the student athletes," said Tim Colbert, interim chair of the Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, and current faculty athletics representative for DSU.
 
Balancing school and the demands of athletic competition can be stressful and difficult for student athletes. That is where the FAR comes into play. FARs are already aware of academic policy, making it easier to ensure student athletes are on the right track toward completing their degrees.
 
"It's more of presenting the issues that we have to deal with in academics to athletics," Colbert said. "We do have classes that I would advocate for that may be better in season/off season, just to let them know what the options are. Having to deal with a lot of athletes already, I kind of understand some of the constraints they'll face." 
 
Colbert has been working at Delta State since 2000. As interim chair of health, recreation, and physical education, Colbert deals with student athletes on almost a daily basis since many of Delta State's student athletes pursue majors within the HPER department.
 
"Ronnie asked me in the summer after Cooper Johnson left if I would be the interim (FAR) for a couple of days because he had scholarships that had to be signed," Colbert said, "I said I would, and then some other things came up, and he said, 'Well, since you've already been doing this, would you mind continuing to do it?'" Colbert agreed and was officially appointed by DSU President Bill LaForge in the fall of 2016.
 
"The first FAR I knew here was Dr. Rose Strahan," Colbert said. "I think she handled things wonderfully. I think the role has definitely grown (over time) with the prominence of sports."
 
Being a FAR is all about knowing the policies and ensuring an institution follows guidelines within those policies.  
 
According to the NCAA, the FAR communicates the benefits of intercollegiate athletics to faculty, the media and the public, and provides an academic perspective to the athletic community. Specific duties of FARs are defined in the NCAA bylaws.
 
According to the NCAA bylaws,

• All member institutions are required to appoint an FAR. (NCAA Bylaw 6.1.3)
• The FAR is the official representative of the institution and faculty. (NCAA Bylaw 4.02.2)
• The FAR can request an NCAA legislative interpretation on behalf of the institution. (NCAA Bylaw 5.4.1.2.1.2)