Knight Commission’s third recommendation features 10 principles by which any college athletics governing agency should subscribe
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Taking a Closer Look at the Knight Commission’s Recommendations to Extract Division I FBS Football from the NCAA & the Commission’s Proposed National Governance Principles - Part II
Knight Commission’s third recommendation features 10 principles by which any college athletics governing agency should subscribe
Some proposed principles align with current Division I principles; while others (like voting rights) challenge the status quo
NCAA President Emmert and SEC Commissioner Sankey provide perspectives and critiques of the Knight Commission's reocmmendations
Presidential accountability for their athletics programs as well as presidential accountability national governance performance worth further exploration
Last week we reviewed the first two of three recommendations coming from the Knight Commission’s (KC) campaign to overhaul and reform college athletics governance. This week we take a closer look at the third recommendation which is a collection of ten principles that the KC believes every national college athletics governing body---including its proposed National College Football Association (NCFA)---should employ to support student-athlete health, safety, and educational success as well as diversity, social justice, mission-aligned spending and administrative accountability.
Recommendation #3 – Adopt 10 Principles to Guide College Athletics Governance
The KC outlined that national governance entities should adopt 10 principles that will recognize college athletics as a public trust, rooted in the mission of higher education:
Prioritize college athletes’ education, health, safety and success
Require college athletes to be academically eligible, making satisfactory progress toward a degree
Prohibit “pay for play,” but allow institutional support tethered to education. Also allow college athletes to earn compensation similar to other students, including through the use of their NIL
Demonstrate and advance commitments to racial and gender equity
Hold athletics program leadership accountable to advance racial equity and reduce systemic racism in college sports
Reflect appropriate voting and decision-making power
Hold presidents accountable for leading their athletics programs
Include meaningful representation of college athletes; governed by a majority of independent directors
Control all national aspects of any sport which it administers, including national championships and revenues
Distribution of national revenues should advance educational missions and educational opportunities for athletes
Some of the KC’s recommended governance principles are, at least at a foundational level, aligned in spirit if not practical application to some of the codified Division I principles and values.
For example, the KC’s first principle of prioritizing college athletes’ education, health, and safety aligns with the NCAA Division I principles of student-athlete well-being and sound academic standards.
The KC’s principle of advancing commitments to racial and gender equity and principle of holding athletics program leadership accountable to advance racial equity and reduce systemic racism in college sports would align, at some level, to NCAA Division I principles of gender equity, sportsmanship and ethical conduct as well as the principle of diversity within the governance structure.
The KC's principle of amateurism that centers on no “pay for play“ yet calls for an increase in policies that would increase student-athlete empowerment (translate: NIL) are also both shared sentiments for NCAA and the KC.
The KC’s second principle requiring college athletes to be academically eligible and making satisfactory progress toward a degree is an area NCAA Division I has canvassed with behavior-changing policies especially the APR and GSR policies that came into being in the 2000s that prioritized academic success and graduation through meaningful measures. As the NCAA has published and often uses in public service announcements, Division I student-athletes are graduating at a higher rate than their non-athlete student peers even by the federal graduation rate standard, a data point sometimes under-emphasized by critics. Specifically, even when using the federal graduation rate, as of 2018, student-athletes graduate at a rate 2% higher than the general student body — 68% compared with 66%. The difference is most stark among black women. Student-athletes in this demographic outpace their peers in the student body by 19% -- 70% for student-athletes compared with 51% for the student body.
Federal rates also provide a long-term picture of student-athlete academic achievement. The federal rate was first collected with the class that entered college in 1984, and the rate has continued to rise over the past 28 years. When rates were first collected, the general student body earned degrees at a rate higher than student-athletes. The rate for all Division I college athletes increased 16 points in that time. The class of black student-athletes who entered in 1984 graduated at a 35% rate, per the federal calculation. That rate is now 61% for the 2011 entering class. In sum, the NCAA has purposefully championed academic success and eligibility in the past couple of decades in meaningful ways.
In addition, Division I’s policies related to academic standing and APR being tied to postseason access as well as academic performance infused in to the Division I revenue distribution formula are congruent with the KC’s tenth principle of using revenues to advance educational missions and opportunities for athletes. Although an evergreen priority, the NCAA has made marked strides in prioritizing academic success and graduation through comprehensive policy reform.
Even with the overlaps in the KC’s proposed principles with the NCAA’s current legislated principles, the KC’s list does highlight certain principles that are more targeted, challenge the status quo, and possibly reach further than current NCAA Division I principles. Let’s examine two of those principles.
The KC’s eighth proposal sets forth an aim toward “meaningful representation of college athletes; governed by a majority of independent directors.” The devil is in the details as to exactly what direction or form the KC would intend this principle to take. This principle may be a suggestion to allow for student-athletes to hold more meaningful voting authority and representation within the NCAA governance structure. Or, alternatively, when taking the word "representation" at face value---could also lend itself to permitting student-athletes to hire and retain professional services in the areas of law and contract negotiation, taxes, licensing, insurance and liability -- recommendations fairly in line with what may be carved out in the pending NIL proposal. If there is an outside entity of “independent directors,” it would be interesting to know exactly how those individuals would be identified and appointed and what their role may be in stewarding student-athletes. If, as the KC noted, the principles should continue to prohibit “pay for play,” there are third parties seeking to unionize and create employment status between student-athletes and their universities that would jeopardize that principle.
One other principle recommended by the KC that may be a long time coming is holding university presidents accountable for leading their athletics programs. National accrediting bodies could take more action and involvement in assessing presidents and chancellors (and the university boards, too) regarding their performance in managing their athletics programs. Additional oversight and accountability for university leadership is not a novel idea, although it’s needed in the eyes of the KC. In 1991, William Rhoden wrote a column in the New York Times on this exact issue and noted the Southern Association of Colleges and School (SACS) proposed a higher level of review and assessment of athletics programs within the university accreditation review process. The SACS had recommended “…intermediate steps the accrediting body could take short of stripping an institution of its certification. One step, deferral of recognition, would require a school to meet certain conditions before its certification is renewed. And it could lead to frequent on-site inspections if a college or university athletic department is implicated in wrongdoing. If the inspection teams determine that the situation has not improved, the accrediting body can then issue a warning that it intends to withdraw accreditation within a specified period of time.” The article went on to note that the NCAA and national accrediting agencies could form alliances both in policy as well as shared resources toward accountability, enforcement and change.
One could argue the KC’s institutional leadership principle might not go far enough, though. The KC may be justified to expand the verbiage in this principle of holding university presidents and chancellors for both “their athletics programs and national collegiate governance structures.” In other words, in addition to campus accountability, there is an opportunity to designate an independent entity to provide oversight and a check on powers held by the NCAA Board of Governors (comprised of presidents and chancellors) and its stewardship and management of everything from litigation matters involving the NCAA to the job performance of the NCAA President.
It has been well-chronicled that presidents and chancellors signed off on the unilateral penalties and fines issued by the NCAA, under NCAA President Mark Emmert, to Penn State University for the Jerry Sandusky saga. This approach never proceeded through the normal NCAA infractions process. The public narrative has been that if the Board believed the Sandusky saga involved violations of specific NCAA rules, the Boarfd should have referred the matter to the NCAA enforcement department to initiate an investigation and proceed through the designated infractions process. This approach would have afforded Penn State the normal due process guaranteed to schools in the NCAA manual including a specific notice of allegations of which NCAA rules were violated and, in turn, any corresponding penalties that should have been issued by the Committee on Infractions. An ombudsperson or other independent committee could have pressed pause on this move by the Board that presents a small circle of presidential leadership for a Division I membership with hundreds of presidents and chancellors. Futher, an independent body could provide oversight to the nomination process and appointment of president and chancellor candidates to the Division I Board of Governors as well as establishing standards of conduct and annual review for those Board members. These additional checks and balances would be worth exploring with an aim toward increased transparency, deterring cronyism and conflicts of interest, fostering accountability, and instilling the public trust championed by KC through independent oversight.
In sum, the KC’s recommendations and rationales include several concepts that seem overlapping to current NCAA principles, but there are principles presented by the KC worth further exploration such as the presidential accountability principle. Many of these KC proposed principles have been advanced by the NCAA, albeit imperfectly. To some, there was not much acknowledgement by the KC of what has gone right under the current NCAA governance structure especially in recent years. When asked about the KC's recommendations, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey highlighted a few major policy changes in recent years (e.g., cost of attendance level for scholarships; concussion testing; time management, etc) accomplished through the "Autonomy Governance" structure whereby the Power 5 Conferences----the ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, Pac-12, and the SEC---were able to mobilize on legislative changes for their respective leagues to the benefit student-athletes across all sports. These policy changes are ones other Division I leagues also could have optioned to adopt (and have in many cases). NCAA President Emmert agreed with Sankey's outlook that the KC's recommendations were not without faults. Emmert noted that the KC was diagnosing some of the right problems, but separating FBS football from the NCAA was the "completely wrong prescription."
These concepts come at a time when college athletics faces a variety of existential challenges, including a pandemic, the rise of technology and its impact on higher education and athletics, the strained mental health of college students including student-athletes, social justice issues, and the constant churn of lawsuits in which the NCAA is named “defendant.” These proposed principles and policy changes including, ironically, Division I voting rights will get oxygen only if the Power 5 conferences get on board -- the same member schools holding the weighted voting rights.
If the KC’s recommended changes and principles cannot find vocal allies from within the NCAA front office and the Division I’s membership, a call for congressional intervention might be KC's Plan B.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
