Adding outside members to the board of directors for Kansas Athletics Inc. would be a good step toward providing the kind of transparency and guidance the athletics department needs to restore confidence following recent controversies.

In fact, it’s such a good idea, that it was part of the KU athletics department structure until a few years ago when the board was “reorganized” in a way that consolidated all the department’s power in a six-member board, made up of five university employees and the student body president.

Before Lew Perkins became KU’s athletic director in July 2003, the KU Athletic Corp. was governed by a 24-member board that included student, faculty and alumni representatives. By January 2004, that structure seemed to be cramping Perkins’ style. That month Perkins announced he wouldn’t seek input from that board on the new “priority point system” he was devising for men’s basketball tickets and would instead take the plan directly to Chancellor Robert Hemenway.

“I don’t report to the board; I report to the chancellor,” Perkins said.

The board eventually did review the plan, but within a month a proposal was on the table to turn most of the athletics board into a “Chancellor’s Advisory Committee for Intercollegiate Athletics” and form a new five-member governing board composed of the athletic director, three university administrators and a faculty representative. The slot for the student body president was added later.

The move was billed as a way to clear up long-standing uncertainties over whether the corporation’s role was to advise the athletic department or make policy. The changes were finalized — at an unscheduled meeting — in April 2004, less than a year after Perkins came on board.

Now, six years and a few scandals later, the conversation has come full circle. On Thursday, Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little told members of the Kansas Board of Regents she would consider appointing outside members to the athletics board. Having board members who aren’t on the university’s payroll would provide for a positive “separation of powers,” one regent said.

What a concept.

It seems obvious at this point that too much power in the athletic department was placed in too few people, some of whom didn’t handle that power appropriately. It’s fine to trust your employees, but a corporation that handles as much money as Kansas Athletics Inc., also has to have procedures in place that verify its policies aren’t being abused.

Gray-Little told the regents she is working on implementing such safeguards, including the hiring of a forensic auditor to provide additional oversight for athletics operations.

Those all seem like sound steps, but it’s interesting that at least when it comes to the makeup of the athletic department’s board, a plan to add outside members actually would be rebuilding a system that was specifically dismantled shortly after Perkins arrived at KU.

Hindsight is 20-20, but it’s easy to wonder whether much of the controversy now surrounding KU’s athletic department might have been avoided if the KU Athletic Corp.’s board had been in place to provide stronger oversight.