Colleges Column

Members of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics last month said that the American public is responding to recent high-level efforts to reform collegiate sports.

Commission members cited a poll by Louis Harris & Associates showing that 48 percent of those surveyed earlier this year said they consider big-time college sports to be "out of control.'' In 1989, 78 percent of those polled felt that way.

Commission members said the results show that reforms made over the last several years by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the commission's own report on intercollegiate athletics issued one year ago, have caused a large part of the public to put more faith in the...