“I think,” Emmert said, “this is a really, really propitious moment to sit back and look at a lot of the core assumptions and say, ‘You know, if we were going to build college sports again, and in 2020 instead of 1920, what would that look like?’”Īt this point, it’s easier to say what it would NOT look like. The simple four bulletin-point “interim policy” ultimately announced just hours before several state NIL laws went into effect on July 1 included quotes from the chairs of the Division II and Division III Presidents Councils. That group spent two years on a proposal that the broader membership never adopted. Which makes zero sense given Bowlsby and Smith’s athletes were far more likely to get endorsement opportunities than Mary Hardin-Baylor’s. That committee included heavyweights like Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby and Ohio State AD Gene Smith, but also, a Division II commissioner and a Division III president. And yet it would be another five years before the NCAA formed one of its famous working groups to address the issue. The decision in that case, the first to declare the organization in violation of antitrust law, came down in 2014. Ed O’Bannon first sued the NCAA over the matter way back in 2009. And yet, for some reason they belong to the same association, beholden to one another whenever a major issue arises. The fact is, athletic departments like theirs hold almost nothing in common with the $5 million-a year operations at Chicago State and New Orleans. This sure feels like an optimal moment in time for the likes of Ohio State and Alabama, with their massive $200 million-a-year enterprises and the clout that comes with them, to step up and do something dramatic. Yet for all the frustrations the current model causes them, they’ve thus far been incapable of devising something else. “Not in my imagination.”Ĭollege administrators are terrific at grumbling about the current state of affairs, mostly by serving up juicy anonymous quotes to reporters. The NCAA’s own president says it’s time for conferences to solve more problems for themselves.Īnd yet, when asked specifically if recent events have pushed the Power 5 conferences closer to splitting off “into their own country,” Sankey, himself a former NCAA committee on infractions chairman, essentially said: Absolutely not. The commissioner of the most successful conference says the old way of doing things is inefficient and outdated. In other words, the time seems ripe for a seismic change to the way college sports is governed. “Expecting every conference to come together to debate, discuss and produce effective decisions for everyone is not our modern reality. “Most recognize that the expectations, demands and pressures that are present on the campuses of (the SEC) are not uniform across all of Division I,” he said. On Monday, the SEC’s Greg Sankey addressed myriad subjects, but there was one recurring theme: The NCAA governance model needs changing. Now, football media days season is upon us, and with it, an opportunity for each conference’s commissioner to weigh in on current events. The name, image and likeness (NIL) era is here to stay. But, for once, the man has read the room. That’s quite the about-face for a man who spent more than a decade in court (and $68 million in legal fees last year) fighting to prevent said athletes from receiving even a dollar more than their scholarship and stipend allow. “(The SCOTUS decision) forces us to think more about what constraints should be put in place on college athletics - and it should be the bare minimum.” “We need to reconsider delegation of a lot of things that are now done at the national level,” Emmert told a group of reporters.
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