As The Temperature Rises Around College Athletics’ State of Transformational Chaos, Two High Profile Sports Are Feeling The Heat
Athletics Veritas is a weekly series aimed at helping higher education executives, faculty, and other stakeholders stay tuned in on trending national issues impacting college athletics, especially NCAA Division I. Athletics Veritas is created by senior DI athletic administrators around the nation.
A State of Transformational Chaos
Executive Summary
College athletics is currently navigating a "Mount Rushmore" of issues, including NIL and pay-for-play, free agency and the transfer portal, College Football Playoff access, infractions cases and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Knight Commission members Duncan and McClendon penned an op-ed for USA Today critiquing the FBS division of college athletics and the CFP.
Among the Knight Commission criticisms were an assertion that the NCAA and March Madness tournament collectively underwrites expenses specific to football and student-athlete health and safety.
Approximately $500M annually is distributed among the Power 5 and independent Notre Dame by the CFP.
Meanwhile, eight Power 5 schools allocated over $90M in "dead money" to buy out head football coaches' contracts.
Three Power 5 schools are paying their head football coaches approximately $9.5M per year.
Division I men's basketball is also feeling the heat of recent and ongoing shifts in the college athletics governance landscape.
The National Association of Basketball Coaches issued a statement of support for DI men's basketball legislative and policy autonomy.
Although DI men's basketball is a key revenue driver across all sports, there are moves towards increased universality between men's and women's basketball.
The NCAA Convention wrapped up last week with a much-anticipated first step toward dismantling the current legislative engine block in favor of a more fuel-efficient model that catches up to, and attempts to more deftly govern, the nebulous 2022-version of college sports.
The present day Mount Rushmore of issues across college sports has many heads, figuratively speaking: NIL and pay for play, free agency and the transfer portal, College Football Playoff (CFP) access, never-ending infractions cases, and, well, the pandemic. These headliners are spawning subtle subplots. One emerging theme starting to emerge is the sense that certain college sports, and how they operate, are under more consistent scrutiny.
Let’s start with Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools at the Power 5 level and the closely-linked CFP system. which is technically an LLC and not an entity under the NCAA’s control.
Arne Duncan, the former U.S. Secretary of Education and Harvard College basketball student-athlete alumnus, and Jacques McClendon, the director of football affairs for the Los Angeles Rams and former University of Tennessee football student-athlete, recently wrote an op-ed piece in USA Today on behalf of the Knight Commission, a college athletics think tank. The piece featured with pointed criticisms aimed toward the highest echelon of college football— the Football Bowl subdivision and the College Football Playoff.
One of the assertions made by the Knight Commission representatives is that the NCAA, which encompasses universities and colleges well beyond schools that sponsor a Division I FBS team, are collectively underwriting expenses often specific to football— namely the costs of FBS related litigation such as lawsuits tied to concussions and other ailments. Meanwhile, as the authors note, the CFP does not directly allocate any money to cover the national costs of athlete health and safety, despite high rates of concussions among football players.
Further, the Knight Commission piece laid out the reality that the NCAA’s March Madness tournament revenue bears the national costs of FBS concussion research, catastrophic insurance and the development of game rules to protect players because the NCAA governance structure absorbs these FBS-related operational and risk-management responsibilities— ones the CFP benefits from.
The parallel point driving the criticism of FBS football at the Power 5 level and the CFP is that the CFP accrues significant revenue— nearly $500 million annually— distributed among Power 5 conference member schools and Notre Dame. Further exacerbating the optics, if not the bottom-line, is that FBS coaching salaries continue to bloom at the Power 5 levels.
Long and short: the 65 universities comprising the Power 5 tier are enjoying the spoils of the CFP while the rest of the NCAA membership, in a way, underwrites the expenses driven by the Power 5 and the CFP system.
There’s been whispers of the Power 5 breaking away from the NCAA for a few years— a much easier forecast in conversation than in reality. Beyond the points noted by the Knight Commission, the NCAA’s administrative function also includes conducting championships, managing playing rules, cultivating national sponsors for its events including March Madness, and processing initial eligibility, among other services— mechanisms the Power 5 would have to recreate in a new college athletics world order where it held its own championships, created its own playing rules, sought its own sponsors, and determined its own eligibility standard.
This financial inequity is further amplified as eight Power 5 schools allocated more than $90 million in “dead money” to buy out their head football coaches’ contracts.
Three Power 5 schools recently escalated coaching salaries, paying their head football coaches roughly $95 million over 10 years, or $9.5 million a year.
As part of its Connecting Athletics Revenues with the Educational Model of College Sports (C.A.R.E.) Model, the Knight Commission calls on the College Football Playoff to earmark money for athlete health, safety and education. The model would mandate much-needed financial transparency by requiring disclosure and would also include athletes in independent oversight of the College Football Playoff.
In addition to high-profile FBS football and the CFP, Division I men’s basketball is feeling the heat. In light of the shifting tectonics in college athletics governance happening with the NCAA constitution overhaul officially in progress, the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) issued a fairly direct statement last week on maintaining its decision-making authority over its sport.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported following statement from the NABC:
“We believe it is prudent to grant Division I men’s basketball broad legislative and policy autonomy to make decisions based on the sport’s unique opportunities and challenges; no longer should a common-sense policy for men’s basketball be rejected because it doesn’t work for another NCAA sport.”
The statement could lead some to infer that Division I men’s basketball wants to retain a clear level of self-determination and not be in lock-step on all governance, legislative, and operational decisions with its obvious counterpart, Division I women’s basketball.
Aspiring toward more alignment between Division I men’s and women’s basketball, especially in the areas of resources and revenue, has the attention of the college athletics world in light of last March’s well-chronicled disparities between the Division I men’s basketball student-athlete tournament experience and that of Division I women’s basketball student-athletes.
If, how, and to what extent Division I men’s basketball and women’s basketball will be identical in its governance and programmatic decisions remains to be seen.
The Division I men’s basketball tournament is the clear revenue driver across all collegiate sports, outside of FBS football and the CFP. Yet, steps toward more universality between men’s and women’s basketball are being implemented. Both sports will be using the “March Madness” slogan this spring to promote their respective championship tournaments— a trademark that was traditionally exclusive to the men’s tournament. That change was one of several recommendations brought forward in the gender equity report issued by Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, the law firm that was tasked with reviewing gender equity disparities across the NCAA’s championships.
The future direction and decision-making around FBS Power 5 institutions, the CFP, and Division I men’s basketball will be interesting to watch in the months and years ahead.
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