Part 1 includes the Knight Commission’s overarching recommendation is to separate FBS football from NCAA governance
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A Closer Look at the Knight Commission’s Governance Recommendations Including Extracting Division I FBS Football from the NCAA - Part I
Knight Commission’s flagship recommendation is to separate FBS football from NCAA governance
FBS’s College Football Playoff organization would fund all FBS football operational and management components including governance, health and safety, revenue distribution, and enforcement
The College Football Playoff organization’s role centers primarily on the postseason playoffs, marketing, and sponsorships -- without having oversight or financial liability over many other aspects of college football.
Knight Commission advocates for equal voting representation for all Division I conferences
Additional perspectives, acclimations and critiques of the Knight Commission’s Recommendations to consider
Last week, the Knight Commission (KC) unveiled three recommendations with corresponding rationales as part of its campaign to “transform the Division I model.” In this week’s AV and the first of a two-part installment, we look at the first two recommendations presented by the KC.
Recommendation #1: Extracting FBS College Football from the NCAA Governance Umbrella
The first of the KC's three governance recommendations is to completely extract FBS football from the NCAA and create the National Collegiate Football Association (NCFA). Specifically, the KC recommended the creation of a new, separate entity to govern the sport of FBS football as follows:
Completely independent of the NCAA, funded by College Football Playoff revenues
Governs the sport of football currently operating at the DI Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level
Conducts all FBS football operations, including its national championship
Manage all issues related to FBS football athlete education, health, safety, revenue distribution, litigation, eligibility and enforcement
The Division I FCS subdivision would remain within NCAA governance, and the NCAA would continue to manage and fund an FCS championship. FBS post-season management is an element the NCAA lacks control over to date.
At this time, the College Football Playoff organization primarily supports college football’s postseason only as it pertains to the selection committee choosing teams for FBS' semifinal and championship games, publishing college football playoff rankings, coordinating FBS playoff semi-final and championship game management and ancillary event promotions, sponsorships and marketing.
The College Football Playoff organization neither has a role in, nor provides funding for, the governance of college football in terms of playing seasons, scholarship limits, recruiting, coaching limits, student-athlete benefits, student-athlete eligibility and amateurism. It also has no role and provides no funding for enforcing all the NCAA rules and regulations tied to those regulatory and operational areas.
The KC rightly points out the financial implications and disconcerting trends borne from FBS football. The FBS revenues (especially at Power 5 level) continue to skyrocket, but the FBS subdivision still carries a wide spectrum of budgets ($16M to $220M). Meanwhile, the expenses in FBS programs continue to soar, especially as they relate to coaching and supplemental staff salaries. Spending trends, as the KC notes, for the Power 5 demonstrate disproportionate increases in football coaching salaries, administrative staff and facilities expenditures (i.e., debt service).
In a survey conducted by the KC, it was determined that more than half of respondents agreed that for both football and men’s basketball, the following statement was accurate: “We spend more than we should to keep up with higher-resourced schools.” Many Division I institutions also rely on institutional budget support including student fees to support their athletics departments' annual budget.
For this recommendation, the KC recommends the creation of the NFCA that would distribute revenue to NCFA schools; oversee regulatory functions including enforcement, eligibility and athlete safety and take ownership of the associated liability for operting FBS football noting the proliferation of lawsuits entangling the NCAA.
Recommendation #2: Reorganizing the NCAA Governance Structure
The KC’s second recommendation calls for the NCAA to continue to govern all other DI sports under a reorganized governance system. Specifically, the KC recommended the following:
The NCAA governs and conducts national operations and championships for all DI sports and for football at the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level.
A new governance system should establish equal voting representation for all Division I conferences.
The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament should be retained in its current structure.
FBS institutions remain full NCAA Division I members in all sports except football
Three of the four sub-points (the first, third and fourth) to this recommendation really maintain the status quo as it pertains to the NCAA governance structure on the premise the first recommendation (extracting FBS football from the NCAA) occurs. However, the second bullet point under Recommendation #2-- related to voting representation within the governance structure -- signifies a departure from current NCAA Division I policies.
This KC’s recommendation aims at resetting the voting rights within the NCAA Division I governance structure back to a one-school, one-vote approach. The NCAA’s organizational and governance history included the NCAA moving to three divisions in 1973 but keeping the one-school, one-vote approach. Then in 1996, Division I adopted a weighted voting process which garnered FBS conferences more clout in the committee meeting rooms, Division I business sessions, and overall governance decision-making process.
The current weighted voting formula within the Division I governance structure breaks out the voting, by conference, in two categories: sports other than football and football.
Division I voting on matters other than football-specific issues or football-specific legislation are weighted as follows:
Representatives [other than those noted in the last two bullets below] from the following conferences and the conference commissioner representative of these conferences shall have four votes each: Atlantic Coast Conference; Big Ten Conference; Big 12 Conference; Pac 12 Conference; and Southeastern Conference;
Representatives [other than those noted in the last two bullets below] from the following conferences and the conference commissioner representative of these conferences shall have two votes each: American Athletic Conference; Mountain West Conference; Conference USA; Sun Belt Conference; and Mid-American Conference;
Representatives from the following conferences and the conference commissioner representatives of these conferences shall have one vote each: America East Conference; Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference; Atlantic 10 Conference; Missouri Valley Conference; Atlantic Sun Conference; Northeast Conference; Big East Conference; Ohio Valley Conference; Big Sky Conference; Patriot League; Big South Conference; Southern Conference; Big West Conference; Southland Conference; Colonial Athletic Association; Southwestern Athletic Conference; Horizon League; The Summit League; The Ivy League; West Coast Conference; the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference; and the Western Athletic Conference;
The two designated faculty athletics representatives shall have one vote each; and
Student-athlete representatives shall have one vote each.
Division I voting on FBS football-specific issues and legislation other than legislation related to scholarship limitations are weighted as follows:
Representatives from the following conferences shall have two votes each: Atlantic Coast Conference; Big Ten Conference; Big 12 Conference; Pac-12 Conference; and Southeastern Conference.
Representatives from the following conferences shall have one vote each: American Athletic Conference; Conference USA; Mid-American Conference; Mountain West Conference; and Sun Belt Conference
Even if FBS football is extracted per the KC’s recommendation, going back to a one-school, one-vote approach might undervalue certain economic realities that helped drive decisions around men’s basketball, such as recruiting and athletics scholarship thresholds.
For example, when the grant-in-aid scholarship limit was changed to the full cost of attendance maximum a few years ago, many lower-resourced schools and conferences were lobbying against the change. And although current rules have allowed non-Power 5 schools the option of granting athletics aid up to the cost of attendance without being compelled to do so, a one-school, one-vote platform could prompt lower- and middle-resourced institutions to vote the rule out entirely with a revamped voting structure simply because those institutions may outnumber higher-resourced institutions.
Other principles espoused by the KC seem to push for more financial support to further student-athlete educational opportunities as well as embrace the impending student-athlete NIL compensation landscape. This is an example of the nuances of college athletics and institutional bandwidths that, when proposals are sponsored and votes taken, can create natural tensions and outcomes that sometimes compete with, if not defy, other stated association principles.
Even if FBS football is extracted from the NCAA governance structure, the economic complexities, realities, and motives that apply to FBS-football still apply to other high-profile, high-revenue sports like men’s and women’s basketball albeit at a different trajectory. If the proposed FBS-less NCAA structure endeavors to redirect and expand financial support to student-athletes more strategically in line with the KC’s principles, those objectives could still be undermined when institutions in an FBS-less NCAA solely still vote with their wallet---opposing measures that come with price tags. The removal of FBS football from the NCAA governance big tent will help simplify matters for the NCAA, but matters in an FBS-less NCAA won’t be simple.
On balance, the recommendations are worth having a broader conversation within the Division I membership. As AV wrote earlier this year, college football is such a unique enterprise that may warrant having a full-time college football commissioner. If extracting FBS-football from the NCAA becomes a reality one day, the NCFA's first hire may be a commissioner.
Next week, in Part II of this two-part review of the KC’s recommendations to overhaul the NCAA governance structure, we will look at the KC's proposed 10 principles to guide college athletics governance.
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