Whenever anyone in the NCAA starts to talk about academic reform, eyes glaze over and minds jump-shift to more important things — like if you remembered to take out the trash or whether to choose paper or plastic at the grocery store.

Sure, everybody wants academic reform because it’s the right thing to do, but everybody also would prefer their teams win, and they realize brains and brawn don’t always come wrapped in the same package.

Most of you probably know Kansas University chancellor Robert Hemenway is leading the charge, riding the white horse so to speak, for reform. As chair of the NCAA Board of Directors, Hemenway is the spokesperson whenever the Board sticks another finger into the scholastic dike.

Obviously, the NCAA isn’t going to do anything rash like make a 3.0 grade point average mandatory for participation, or require student-athletes to pass a general knowledge test every year, but the board is at least trying to prove it is just as interested in academic reform as it is in squeezing more money out of the television networks.

The NCAA Board took a small but important step a few weeks ago when it resurrected a rule it had discarded decades ago.

Starting with the 2003-2004 year, every student-athlete will have to be certified for every semester. No exceptions. For the last 20 years ago so, only freshmen and first-year junior college transfers had to be certified at each term.

In other words, if a freshmen or a juco transfer on a basketball team didn’t make his grades during the first semester, he was ineligible to play during the second semester. Arguably, the most publicized incident involving that rule at Kansas University occurred during the 1987-88 men’s basketball season when Marvin Branch, a juco transfer, was declared ineligible for the spring semester. Branch was a starter during the first semester, yet without him the Jayhawks somehow went on to win the NCAA championship.

Time was, though, when all basketball players were in danger of becoming ineligible for the second semester, yet that rule was rescinded because of the paperwork involved and, frankly, because of the inevitable publicity at high-profile schools it became an embarrassment to both the university and the athlete.

Now the paperwork and the potential embarrassment are back.

“One of the criticisms of Division One eligibility certification,” Hemenway told the NCAA News, “is that once a student-athlete is certified at the beginning of the academic year, there is kind of a ‘free pass’ for the entire year. The Board’s action eliminates that concern.”

The Board, in fact, overruled the NCAA Management Council which had rejected the recommendation because of the “administrative burden” it would place on many schools, particularly those on the quarter system.

Hard cheese, the Board countered. Administrative burdens in the pursuit of a university’s mission are irrelevant.

Not that this Hemenway-led legislation came as a surprise to members of the Big 12 Conference. A similar rule has been in effect in the league for the last year.

“Basically, the NCAA is coming in line with us,” said Janelle Martin, KU’s associate athletic director for compliance.

And, as far as the extra paperwork goes, Martin doesn’t foresee schools being buried in red tape.

“What I hope is we won’t have to put all the names on certification forms,” she said. “The only ones we had to do this year were the ones who weren’t eligible.”

Martin also noted the NCAA legislation isn’t as tough as what the Big 12 already has in place. The NCAA stipulates student-athletes must pass at least six hours per semester while the Big 12 mandates seven hours of credit for continuing eligibility.

Another difference is timing. If a student-athlete is determined to be ineligible after the first semester ends, the NCAA says he or she will remain eligible until the second semester begins. In the Big 12, if you fail to make the grade you’re ineligible immediately.

With the thousands upon thousands of dollars big-football universities pour into their academic support programs, it’s highly unlikely many student-athletes will “flunk out” at the semester under this new legislation.

In essence, what the NCAA Board of Directors has done is send a message, however inconsequential, that academic accountability will not be shortchanged in the pursuit of TV loot.