Lifetime scholarships. Grants for student-athletes’ siblings. A five-year moratorium on NCAA legislation.

Kansas University chancellor Robert Hemenway suggested those outside-the-box possibilities to members of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics this week.

Hemenway, chair of the NCAA Board of Directors, spent Wednesday and Thursday in Indianapolis discussing with the Commission, a privately financed watchdog group composed mostly of college presidents, the ongoing need for reform of college sports.

Hemenway said the lifetime scholarships would be available for athletes to finish an undergraduate degree or earn an advanced degree.

As reported in The Indianapolis Star, Hemenway said: “When we give a grant-in-aid to a student, why don’t we make it a lifetime grant-in-aid? Why don’t we say this is not just for the four years that you compete at the University of Kansas? If you stay in good academic standing, we’ll guarantee you a grant-in-aid until you get a Ph.D.”

The lifetime grant, he added, would recognize the “value you brought to the University of Kansas when you played on the … Jayhawk basketball team.”

Hemenway also mentioned the possibility of awarding scholarships to athletes’ siblings to make up for the inequity of white coaches making million-dollar salaries and black student-athletes from impoverished backgrounds receiving no money.

“I think those are the kinds of things we should give some thought to,” Hemenway said.

Wally Renfro, senior adviser to the NCAA president, attended the meeting and told the Indianapolis newspaper he hadn’t heard Hemenway’s ideas before.

“In concept, everybody will nod their head and say, ‘Great idea,'” Renfro said. “In practice, when you apply the numbers to specific budgets, people will say, ‘I don’t know how it’s going to work here.'”

Hemenway also made reference to the NCAA’s unwieldy 487-page rulebook for Division One schools.

“My most radical idea on reforming the NCAA is to declare a five-year moratorium on any new legislation,” he said.

“Is there anybody who thinks the NCAA doesn’t have enough legislation?”

Hemenway said the NCAA would be best served by spending those five years trying to make the rulebook “a little more understandable and maybe get rid of regulations we don’t need.”