Mark Emmert, ADs discuss 'a lot of change' on horizon
Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports 9:08 p.m. EDT September 24, 2013
GRAPEVINE, Texas – Inside a conference room Monday near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, NCAA president Mark Emmert laid out a timeline for what are expected to be massive changes in the governance of college athletics.
In a speech to the Faculty Athletics Representatives of the so-called "1A" organization, which encompasses schools in the top-level Football Bowl Subdivision, Emmert suggested that a new model for Division 1 could emerge out of presidential meetings in October, January and April, ready for implementation by next August.
Meeting downstairs in the same hotel, athletics directors were skeptical. Hardly anything moves that fast in the world of college athletics, especially something as intricate as NCAA governance.
But as they emerged Tuesday morning, there was not only a consensus that major changes were coming to the NCAA structure but that athletics directors, who have felt marginalized in high-level policy discussions the past several years, were going to have a much bigger voice in how the NCAA is reshaped.
"There was a time when we were real leaders," said one BCS athletics director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions this week were supposed to be private. "Because of the gyrations and the system reinventing itself over time, we were reduced to middle managers. Now we need to reemerge as leaders. We're on the tarmac every day in this enterprise, and it's very important to us."
What direction the reform effort takes and exactly what role athletics directors play in reshaping the NCAA is unclear. But with virtual unanimity on the NCAA's need to modernize some policies and have a more flexible governance structure – a conversation that officially started in July with comments from Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive, Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner John Swofford and Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby – there's motivation at all levels to enact significant change.
"If anything, the imperative for change is greater today than it was a few months ago," Bowlsby said. "It's just a matter of agreeing what that change is going to be."
Though the discussions are still in the early stages, some key themes about NCAA reform are emerging, based on conversations with several athletics directors and other powerbrokers.
1) An NCAA breakaway remains far-fetched: Despite significant frustrations with the NCAA, and particularly in enforcement where credibility is at an all-time low, there is zero momentum to the long-theorized notion of leaving the NCAA and forming a new organization. Even the formation of a so-called "Division 4" for the richest schools is not likely to result in major changes that fans would notice. Rather, a new subset within Division 1 would be mostly about flexibility and voting power to enact policies without pushback from schools that don't have FBS football programs.
"I think it will be very 'inside baseball' type of stuff," said one athletics director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conversations are supposed to be private.
2) FBS seems unified: Despite the vast financial differences from top to bottom, it seems there is relative agreement between all 10 FBS conferences on the big issues. One of the major misconceptions is that schools in the Mid-American Conference or Sun Belt, for instance, are concerned that more rule-making power will favor the wealthier conferences. The truth is that those leagues have never been on a level playing field and are better off staying attached to the big schools.
"Everyone in the room brings something to the table that affects their campus, but at the end of the day you've got to have a united voice," TCU athletics director Chris Del Conte said. "It's the first time I ever felt like we had unbelievable dialogue from everybody. Some institutions drive a battleship, some drive tugboats, but coming out of it everybody was united on every front."
3) "Federated" governance may be considered: One concept floating around the meetings would be to reform the NCAA into an organization akin to the U.S. Olympic Committee, where each sport has some autonomy to deal with its unique issues. Though it's unclear exactly how that would work, especially because television deals are filtered through conferences, not the NCAA, there's some consensus that governing football and men's basketball by the same set of rules as, say, tennis no longer makes much sense.
4) Enhancing the scholarship remains a tricky issue: Though there's virtual unanimity that athletes should, and ultimately will, receive some sort of stipend above the value of their scholarship, there's still disagreement about how to implement it.
After Emmert's plan for a $2,000 "miscellaneous expense allowance" was shot down by the NCAA membership in 2011, he is yet to come forth with a second effort. At January's NCAA convention, Emmert said a new proposal would be released by April, but nothing has yet come of that promise, and now it appears nothing will happen until the governance issues are sorted out.
"There's a group of individuals working on it, and it's still very much alive," Emmert said Monday. "I think clearly we need to be constantly looking at whether or not we're providing student-athletes with a fair relationship. The scholarship model that's in place right now has been the same for 40 years."
There's still disagreement among the college athletics community about what form it takes. Some favor need-based stipends, others favor a model in which only full scholarship athletes would get a stipend and some favor a stipend in which amounts differ by school based on cost of living. That brings up another set of issues because a football player at UCLA, under that scenario, would get a bigger check than an athlete at Kansas State.
"I always felt that's what the rule should be if we go in that direction," UCLA athletics director Dan Guerrero said. "I think the $2,000 was sort of a compromise because it might be more palatable to schools that maybe didn't have the wherewithal to cover that cost – and it still didn't work. The ability for something like that to happen in the future is probably there, it's just how you do it."
5) Reform on agent rules coming?: Slive's comments to the Associated Press last week that the NCAA's current agent rules were "part of the problem, not part of the solution" got the attention of high-ranking officials. Several SEC athletics directors told USA TODAY Sports that Slive had not addressed them as a group about those comments and weren't sure of his intentions, but the general feeling is that when he speaks, it's usually wise to listen.
The comments came in the wake of a Yahoo! Sports report alleging that players at Alabama, Mississippi State and Tennessee had accepted improper benefits from a runner for agents. If proven true, the allegations could potentially force Alabama to vacate its last two national titles, though few believe it will come to that.
Athletes are allowed, per NCAA rules, to meet with agents just not accept benefits or agree to be represented by an agent (verbally or in writing) prior to the end of their eligibility. It's unclear how to massage those rules without crossing the line of allowing agents to provide benefits, but Missouri athletics director Mike Alden said the NCAA leadership council, which he chaired in 2010-11, had started a task force on examining agent issues but never followed up.
"It just got delayed and delayed and delayed," Alden said. "To begin those discussions and not do anything with them, just let them lay there, was pretty frustrating. I think that's just another comment by commissioner Slive, who is a great leader and very savvy guy, that organizationally and structurally we need to be at a place where we're able to address modern day issues."
