The arms race that is college athletics achieved a degree of separation Thursday.
The 16-2 vote by the NCAA Board of Directors gave the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Ten Conference, the Big 12 Conference, the Pacific-12 Conference, and the Southeastern Conference the ability to establish some rules unilaterally. The move is seen as a way for the “power five conferences” to gain the autonomy they need to better serve the needs of their student-athletes, possibly by giving them stipends to cover costs associated with college life or to give them cost of attendance scholarships that would allow them to pay for things other than tuition, room and board, books, and fees.
Anything that benefits the student-athletes is a positive. Between travel, practice, conditioning, games, and media availability, student-athletes have a difficult challenge balancing their time between their studies and athletics. The majority of student-athletes don’t earn revenue for their respective schools, but that shouldn’t stop the ones that do — primarily in college football and men’s basketball — from seeing a greater dividend for their skills and abilities to promote and to sell their Bulldogs or Rebels.
But Thursday’s vote is just the first step. No one knows where it will go. If you need a reminder, just look at how the landscape shifted when the dominoes of conference realignment started. Conferences with decades of tradition disappeared as schools shifted — or ignored — alliances in hopes of a bigger payday.
Make no mistake, money is at the heart of this move. That’s why the comment by Boise State President Bob Kustra resonates so loudly.
“For those who already think that Division I athletics has devolved into a business that too often dictates university priorities rather than the other way around, it’s about to get worse,” Kustra was quoted by The Associated Press on Aug. 8. “These elite programs will bear less and less resemblance to amateur athletics and the mission and role of a university. No one should think it will stop there.”
One can wonder if Kustra would have made the comment if his school had been fortunate enough to earn an invitation to join the Pac-12, or some new and bigger variation of that league.
It wasn’t too long ago that the concept of super conferences was being bandied about as a next step in the aftermath of conference realignment. After all, if ESPN can sign an agreement with the SEC to create a television station — the SEC Network, which debuts Thursday — that will be available to 80 million viewers, what is to stop another media giant to take the next step? What about having football and men’s basketball teams compete in one super conference that is divided into five divisions? The teams would move up or down — promoted or demoted, if you will — based on their success. The schools at the top, most likely Alabama, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, USC, UCLA, and Michigan, to name a few, would receive higher TV revenue, while others like Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Kansas State, Northwestern, Texas Tech would receive smaller portions of the pie.
If that sounds preposterous, don’t doubt the power of the bottom line. While the idea of preserving conference rivalries and relationships sounds collegial, it may not be a wise business move as the NCAA landscape changes and student-athletes have the ability to go to a school in Alabama that can offer them more than just a scholarship than a school in Connecticut in the American Athletic Conference, which isn’t a member of the big five leagues.
Mississippi State Director of Athletics Scott Stricklin said Friday that MSU will work with the league to put forth reforms and measures — like cost of attendance scholarships or medical insurance — that most benefit the student-athletes. When asked about oversight, Stricklin said he didn’t think any school would “purposely skirt around a rule,” and that he was confident “everybody would follow the spirit of the rule.”
It remains to be seen what those rules are, but oversight needs to be addressed and increased. If the pessimists are correct, there is plenty of cheating in college athletics. The skirting of those laws doesn’t appear to have affected the interest in the SEC Network or another college football season. So what’s to stop programs from moving away from the rules to try to gain an advantage, especially if it means their school could reap a bigger financial windfall?
Despite the NCAA’s vote Thursday, the power five conferences still need the schools in the 27 other conferences. They need them to fill out their non-conference schedules so their football and men’s basketball teams can stock up on victories to secure an invitation to the NCAA tournament or a bowl game. That’s why the power five conferences have to walk a fine line and not flout their new-found autonomy and widen the gap that already exists between them and the other leagues. That will be difficult. The optimist in me says they will be able to do it because it will help preserve the notion — if not the model — for “amateur” athletics. The pessimist in me says the NCAA’s vote is a first step toward a gradual disintegration of the NCAA as we know it.
Will that be in the best interest of the student-athletes? It probably will be for the football and men’s basketball players. For those who play volleyball, lacrosse, golf, tennis, or compete in track and field and swimming, it’s probably not a good sign because the number of opportunities for them likely will decrease or be eliminated.
Adam Minichino is sports editor of The Dispatch. You can reach him at aminichino@cdispatch. Follow him on Twitter @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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