KG-MVP21

ESPN - NCAA president Myles Brand said Monday it might be time for the NCAA to work with the NBA, other basketball organizations and even shoe companies on a plan that would better prepare high school athletes for success in college.

Because the NCAA is stepping up colleges' and universities' accountability for poor academic performance and graduation rates, Brand said it's unfair to schools and student-athletes when the students arrive on campus without the academic background to take college-level courses.

"Maybe working together with the NBA and lots of others -- USA Basketball, the [Amateur Athletic Union], the National Federation of High Schools -- and including key elements such as the shoe companies ... working all together, is there something we can do to help improve that pre-collegiate environment?" Brand said during a visit to Hampton University, where he took questions from athletic department staffers.

Brand said he and NBA commissioner David Stern, who this year said the NBA would consider becoming involved in helping secondary schools to better prepare their athletes, discussed the issue at a "summit" last year in Chicago.

"It's one of the most recalcitrant and difficult problems we now face in all of college sports, in part because the NCAA has no control over what happens before college by definition," Brand said. Having student-athletes not capable of making the grade "makes if difficult for the coach and it makes it difficult for the young people who are being recruited, too. They're not always getting the straight information."