How the NCAA’s Modernization Efforts and the NABC’s Recent Plea for Self-Governance May Be Driving Down the Same Lane
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.
How the NCAA’s Modernization Efforts and the NABC’s Recent Plea for Self-Governance May Be Driving Down the Same Lane
Executive Summary
Division I Proposal 2021-31 that eliminates the requirement that all coaches seeking to recruit off-campus must pass the annual NCAA written recruiting exam was recently adopted
Eliminating the annual written recruiting exam is part of the on-going NCAA modernization campaign.
Removal of recruiting exam places more onus on NCAA member institutions to ensure coaches and sport-specific non-coaching staff are educated, monitoring, and adhering to NCAA recruiting rules
The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Executive Director previews a plan where men’s college basketball coaches and other college athletics leaders would maintain more decision-making authority and autonomy over their sport’s governance.
The NABC’s inclination for more autonomy may align with the appetite to extract from the one-size-fits-all sports legislative formula (like the recruiting exam) in favor of sport-level governance.
Athletics Veritas recommended earlier this year multiple policy changes that would ensure college coaches and coaches associations are more involved in the governance process and take more ownership of their sport—on and off the court.
Coaches Associations seeking more independence from NCAA governance must consider the economics of taking on more self-governance before ceding the status quo.
Earlier this month, Division I adopted proposal 2021-31 – a proposal that eliminated the long-standing NCAA written recruiting exam. The exam was a national standardized test that Division I coaches in all sports were required to pass in order to recruit off-campus. With the exam going by the wayside this August, the onus will increase for NCAA member schools to enrich their educational outreach and consider conducting their own recruiting-preparation protocols, including quizzes or exams, to determine a coach’s understanding of NCAA rules and readiness to recruit off-campus.
This rule change is one of several coming through the NCAA’s modernization pipeline. The NCAA Division I Board of Directors Infractions Process Committee requested that the Legislative Committee Modernization of the Rules Subcommittee focus its rules modernization efforts on identifying rules that no longer serve the needs of the membership and the 21st century student-athlete, and recommending modifications to or the elimination of such rules.
In this instance, the requirement that a coach must pass a standardized national test developed by the NCAA national office does not ensure that the coach is educated on NCAA recruiting rules. The proposal’s rationale goes on to state that NCAA member institutions and conferences are best positioned to determine the most effective methods to ensure coaches understand the practical application and expectations of NCAA legislation related to the recruitment of prospects.
A requirement that coaches receive rules education before engaging in recruiting for an institution for the first time and that they receive continuing education on an annual basis provides an appropriate minimum standard for knowledge of recruiting rules according to the proposal's rationale. NCAA resources that are currently used to produce the recruiting exam could be used to provide educational resources for institutions, which could include modules on the NCAA learning management system.
Meanwhile, as deregulation through modernization takes additional footing, coaches associations are wanting more autonomy over their corners of the college athletics landscape.
As The Athletic recently reported, the NABC is asking to form a leadership panel composed of conference commissioners, athletic directors, athletes and coaches, who will make both legislative and policy decisions autonomously for college basketball. The essence of this push by the NABC is to have more say in policies that impact their sport including at the proverbial final table where decisions are made and in more expedient ways. This appetite from the NABC would further detach the governance of men’s college basketball from the one-size-fits all NCAA governance structure stewarding all sports.
The NABC’s push would still align with NCAA constitutional principles, but give its member coaches more direct influence on policy decisions related to scheduling, the recruiting calendar, staff composition and most critically budgetary oversight.
NABC Executive Director Craig Robinson, a former Division I men’s basketball head coach at Oregon State, laid out the rationale for this campaign: “We are the stakeholders in college basketball,’’ Robinson said. “Believe it or not, we do care about the sport and we want what is best. This just makes sense.’’
The headlines of today’s college sports world— including NIL and the transfer portal— are creating urgency on the basketball coaches’ part.
“We’ve got guys going to college campuses, to the dorms to recruit players with the transfer portal,’’ Gonzaga coach Mark Few told the Athletic. Few is one of several high-profile coaches who served on an ad hoc committee to work out the proposal. “We have to have a rule that says, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ But we don’t need to take it to a committee so they can make a proposal and then vote on it next spring. We need it like tomorrow. That’s what we’re talking about. We’ve got a bunch of Hall of Fame coaches in this. They know a thing or two.’’
Coincidentally, Athletics Veritas identified earlier this year the potential and value in increasing the role and involvement of college coaches’ associations in the day to day affairs of their respective sports as a critical focal point for the future success and integrity of college athletics.
“Coaches associations from the highest profile sports should establish a standing ethics committee and continue to develop expectations for their members and outline standards tied to ethics, integrity, and shared responsibility.
Each sport has some version of a coaches association and, in many cases, the coaches’ associations work closely with its sport’s governing body on a variety of issues impacting the health and growth of the sport.
The infractions process cannot be cured by NCAA regulatory solutions alone. Coaches associations, like the NABC, the AFCA, the WBCA, and others need to take more ownership of the behavioral expectations of its own members including consideration of publishing code of ethics and potential discipline for violations of those codes.”
In addition to the emphasis on ethics and integrity, Athletics Veritas championed the involvement of coaches in the NCAA infractions process as “jurors” by serving on infractions panels hearing the cases involving their peers:
“There are no active coaches, from any sport, currently serving on the Committee [on Infractions], meaning that no Committee member is required to actually follow the current version of NCAA rules. Adding such a member to infractions hearing panels could provide unique perspective and context to the often nuanced and complex elements of an infractions case including real-world perspectives on how NCAA rules are being applied by coaches across the country.
Additionally, there are innovative ways to incorporate coaches into the Committee. Rather than assigning two or three coaches to serve multi-year terms on the Committee, each case could be randomly assigned two to three Division I head coaches from a sport relevant to the details of that case. The randomized process could account for direct conflicts of interest and other legitimate reasons for dismissal and rotate the service requirement across all Division I head coaches in that sport.
Although the Committee has a small portion of individuals who work daily in athletics, not having coaches involved in the processing of cases is a disservice to the diversification of perspectives that should drive these adjudications. It would also inject more accountability – among coaches – that they need to be part of the process and solution, not just be a defendant.
Coaches have long lamented that the process does not work or that coaches who did cheat “got off easy.” The jury room, so to speak, is missing the perspective of individuals who can best understand the reality of what a head coach implicated in a case might be experiencing under current NCAA rules.”
These enfranchisement themes appear aligned with what the NABC is pursuing---a more efficient and empowered voice to make rules on the front end and a tangible role in the back-end adjudication. The NABC may be the first of several college coaches’ associations stepping forward seeking more decision-making authority and influence over their sport’s governance and ethics as college sports governance undergoes a metamorphosis.
There is the potential for compelling congruity between the type of deregulation arising from the NCAA’s legislative modernization, including the legislative process itself, and the coaches’ association’s appetite for increased influence in its sport’s affairs. There's general consensus that the NCAA rulebook has become a Byzantine bible of bylaws. This modernization could be well-timed to not only change dated rules, but reinvent the who and the how those rules come to be.
Interestingly, how well-resourced coaches’ associations are may affect how much independence from the current NCAA governance structure they might realistically seek noting the NCAA governance process is well-heeled to handle the cost of doing governance business. An autonomous and effective governance process run by basketball stakeholders for college basketball will take both sweat equity and financing. When looking at creating a new basketball governance structure, staffing model, and annual budget, perhaps the NABC could seek an annual allocation from the cash-rich March Madness broadcast rights deal.
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.
