 "Photo: Courtesy of USC Sports Information")
"I will practice personal and academic integrity; I will respect the dignity of all persons ... striving to learn from differences in people and opinions."
The Carolinian Creed: Those words echo a call to respect the dignity for all students at USC. As a Carolinian, students are called to be upstanding citizens not only academically and athletically, but morally as well. People who fit into such a description are called leaders.
Sophomore offensive guard William Brown, who goes by Web, is a leader - and not only because he follows his Carolinian Creed. He is out in the nation, showing other athletes from around the country just what the Carolinian Creed truly means to him.
His leadership reached one of its highest points in July when Brown was selected to represent USC in the SEC Student Athletic Advisory Committee. The SAAC is designed to deal with problems and issues that arise from being a student-athlete.
Beyond that, Brown saw an opportunity to have his voice heard, and he applied to be the representative to the national SAAC for the SEC. After four players were picked from the applicants in the SEC, Brown was selected by the NCAA to be the sole player representative from the SEC.
The national SAAC is designed to gather input from the student-athletes most respected and revered by their peers and coaches and use that input to decide its course of action on many delicate issues.
"Our main goal is to raise awareness to student-athlete welfare and issues that are going on, and we do that through providing our input into legislation that our schools, conferences and the NCAA as a whole sets forth," Brown said. "What happens is the legislators will look at how the student-athletes feel and put that into their decisions."
The SAAC gives its opinions on issues such as the new Academic Progress Rate, a system being implemented in all NCAA schools that follows the school's progress in the way of retaining and graduating players academically. In the upcoming year, the SAAC is looking to discuss the possibility of allotting more women's athletic scholarships to all NCAA schools.
Since then, Brown has traveled to California for meetings with the SAAC. In November, he would have headed to San Antonio, Texas, but instead, he will be playing in the Clemson-Carolina game. In January, he will spend a weekend in Indianapolis for the NCAA convention.
Through the SAAC, Brown has found another way to provide leadership on a national scale. He is part of the NCAA Football Issues Committee, a similar committee to the SAAC but talks in particular about football.
The problems that the Football Issues Committee deals with are issues such as recruiting penalties and scholarship issues that arise because of the business that college football is becoming. The committee also helped the NCAA decide to allow teams to schedule 12 games in a year.
Brown said he has thoroughly enjoyed being a part of these two committees and has taken away a greater knowledge of how the NCAA works, but he has found more rewarding things about the experience than just that.
"I get to be a voice in it now; I now have power to go to my school and say 'Hey this is what we're talking about nationally' and say 'Hey what do y'all think about it?' and then I can take that back nationally and say 'Hey this is how South Carolina feels about it, this is how the SEC feels about it,'" Brown said. "Then together we can fix things and change problems that need to be ratified."
The Carolinian Creed calls its students to rise above the rest and provide others with a glimpse into what it means to be a USC Gamecock. Brown has taken that as a personal challenge and represents himself, his team and, most of all, his school on a national scale.
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