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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.

If we had a College Football Commissioner, what would they oversee?
Editor's Note: Earlier this month, ESPN reported that the College Football Playoff Board of Managers had preliminary discussions about restructuring how college football is governed. These discussions would portend the possibility of college football being wholly removed from NCAA governance. The Playoff Board of Managers is composed of presidents and chancellors from ten FBS conferences as well as Notre Dame's President.  

Two years ago, AV ran a three-part series on how college football could potentially benefit from a governance restructure that included the creation of a "college football commissioner" role. As this recent news about college football governance came to light and with the 2022 college football season nearing, we wanted to bring this three-part series back to the forefront for our readership.
Looking at the professional level, the NFL’s Constitution and Bylaws spell out the powers and responsibilities of the NFL Commissioner in extensive detail. Using the constituted NFL Commissioner role as a point of reference, here are a few responsibilities a College Football Commissioner (CFC) could employ to make college football more organized to strategically deal with select national issues, like a pandemic’s impact on the season, in an efficient manner.
  • The person would need to be a person of unquestionable integrity. 
  • The person would need to know the sport, but be independent. 
  • The person would need to be nominated and elected by the 11 FBS conferences with each conference carrying a single vote or, as has been the voting modus operandi within NCAA governance, grant weighted voting to the Power 5 institutions (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, SEC) and the sole power-independent, Notre Dame.
However, there are key differences between professional football and college football that make an apples-to-apples comparison not purely synchronous.  Nonetheless, the foundational elements of both pro and college football overlap enough to invite a closer look at what a commissioner could do for college football. Here’s an opening list of what a CFC could oversee with exclusive and final authority.

Health & Safety

With input from national and university-based medical experts, the CFC could mandate health and safety protocols ranging from concussion prevention within the game to COVID testing, distancing, and related policies that provide baseline uniformity and expectations for all college football games beginning with FBS. Certainly the NCAA member schools -- regardless of whether they’re FBS or Division III -- want to collectively protect the health and safety of the student-athletes through common measures. But the CFC could serve in a leadership role in this regard while still collaborating with groups such as the NCAA’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport (CSMAS). This association-wide committee personifies the inherent challenge with the current NCAA governance model and highlights why a CFC could offer value. The CSMAS consensus-building must span multiple divisions represented by its roster of 20+ individuals. A CFC could be informed by policy recommendations from the CSMAS but act more efficiently on behalf of the student-athletes, coaches, and other stakeholders in collegiate athletics’ most high-profile sport.

How will member institutions individually decide to reopen, in what timeframe, and under what conditions? This season may be more unpredictable and uneven than any in history. Some Division I teams may be ready for play by late August and others, guided by their universities, local, and state officials, could be playing their first games weeks, if not months, later. A CFC could be the central negotiator, mediator and adjudicator on how to balance local decision-making within the single FBS system while keeping student-athletes, coaches, support staff, and fans' collective health and safety at the forefront of decision-making.

Participant Conduct & Discipline

The NFL Commissioner carries significant and exclusive authority over disciplinary matters. Disciplinary decisions on non-NCAA academic and amateurism eligibility conduct matters could present another area that should fall within the scope of a CFC’s authority.

The conduct matters arising in college football that a CFC could adjudicate may include coach-official abuse; in-game player fighting; and off-field coach or player misconduct (e.g., sexual assault). The lack of effective enforcement and accountability, for example, of college football student-athletes averting punishment at one school for sex offenses to resurface at another school after transferring has been well chronicled.  There would be due process considerations (e.g., Commissioners conducting hearings for involved parties) and delineating the CFC’s disciplinary authority over college football coaches, for example, who are within the college football jurisdiction, but also remain employees of a university.

The CFC disciplinary role would not seemingly reach as far as a pro sport’s commissioner’s authority. The NFL Commissioner’s role, for example, extends to arbitrating grievances between teams and players, teams and employees, and even between teams. Conference commissioners and athletic directors would continue to adjudicate those conduct matters.

The disciplinary authority a CFC could possess may be a healthy shot to college football’s arm in terms of independence, accountability and repercussions, whether the punishment be game suspensions for student-athletes involved in pregame fights or fining a head coach $50,000 for comments detrimental to college football. Conference commissioners, athletic directors and university presidents can be conflicted with their current disciplinary responsibilities when it comes to their own football teams and coaches -- issuing a hollow penalty or light-touch public reprimand to express concern and virtue, but not in any way harm the team’s (and, in turn, conference’s) opportunity to win on the field or bruise the ego of highly paid head coaches.  A truly independent CFC takes out the perceived conflict of interest from those university and conference-level representatives who have a clearer financial stake in the disciplined individuals’ performance.

National Voice

A CFC would provide a face for the sport and a unified voice on matters of national import. This may be more optics and public relations than anything, but those are important functions for a high-profile sport. A unifying voice on college football could assist the schools and conferences from looking too disjointed on matters that necessitate some level of consensus and shared framework -- like how the 2020 college football season will play out. A visible and central voice, in its own right, is important to the health of the sport.

In addition to speaking authority with the media, the CFC could be responsible for issuing an annual report on college football and hosting an annual state of the sport address with the media as part of a national convention or annual meeting.

The CFC (or designee) could also serve as ex officio member to all of NCAA, AFCA, College Football Playoff, and FBS conference football committees noted above. It would be essential to delineate the matters falling within the CFC’s purview from matters that a conference commissioner, for example, would handle on the public relations front.

Integrity of the Game; Best Interests of the Sport; Playing Rules

A tenet to most modern pro sports commissioners’ duties is the expectation and authority to act in the best interest of the sport and protect the integrity of the game. NCAA football playing rules are a manifestation of the integrity of the game. The playing rules for college football are managed within the NCAA governance structure and, specifically, reviewed and administered by the multi-divisional Football Rules Committee which is comprised of football coaches, officials, and administrators.  The Football Rules Committee’s recommendations and actions funnel up to the NCAA’s Playing Rules Oversight Panel, which oversees playing rules issues and recommendations across all sports within the Division I.

There may be a role for a CFC to serve when it comes to on-field playing rule matters. For one, a CFC’s authority allows for more nimble decision-making whereas the NCAA process takes agenda building, committee meetings, and a layered decision-making pipeline that overwhelms the ultimate output -- making reasonable, but efficient decisions in the best interest of the sport.

For example, the “targeting” penalty, which is prime example of playing rule that encroaches on player safety, could be monitored and managed more efficiently and even in-season, if needed, by a CFC and an executive rules committee they oversee to be more responsive to player safety than the current committee over committee playing rules assembly-line model. The CFC could still call on medical experts, game officials, coaches, and players for input, but not be shackled to governance bureaucracy that hinders the expediency of matching rules with the modern game.

Another topic threatening the best interests of the game would be the proliferation of legalized sports gambling in America. The CFC’s authority as it pertains to sports gambling would naturally include employing systems to monitor and protect the participants and games (e.g., injury reports; betting lines) to protect the integrity of the games and deter corrupt behaviors such as game-fixing and point-shaving. The CFC would need to build relationships with the sports books and casinos and state gaming commissions who share similar interests in protecting the integrity of college sports, especially college football. In the end, the thinking goes, Joe Q Public will bet less if they think the games are fixed; therefore, it’s a business decision for sport books and gaming commissions to want games to be fair and not fixed -- and it’s a health and safety and integrity decision for the CFC.
Officiating & Instant Replay

The CFC’s office could establish a national officiating network and develop education programs and national standards. Right now, conferences utilize coordinators of officials to assign referees to games, assess officials’ in-game performances, and manage instant replay. FBS conferences have created officiating consortiums for their college football programs, partly to create operational and economic efficiencies in how officials are assigned and scheduled.

The consistency in performance and accountability on the back end (think lost game opportunities for officials who missed "obvious" calls in recent games), though, have been two issues Division I administrators and football coaches have cited when identifying challenges with officiating. Developing and retaining good officials also includes a need for more robust training and higher pay -- something the pro leagues (albeit with fewer games) have been able to achieve under the direction of the pro leagues’ commissioners, whereas college football and the conferences haven’t achieved the same results. The CFC’s office could coordinate officials and potentially save the officials (who are independent contractors) money by assigning games to officials further in advance and prior to games being publicly announced when fans soak up available flights and hotels.

In addition to coordinating officials at the national level, the CFC could implement and manage a nation-wide instant replay system that pre-empts conference-level mishandling that has occurred in recent years.

Scheduling 

The NFL generates positive press and fan anticipation in its annual release of the regular-season schedule. And although college football scheduling is really owned locally by schools and their conferences, the headline issue today in college football is the vitality of the 2020 college football season and when college football may begin.  

A hybrid model would be a compromise for institutions and conferences who currently maintain control of their football schedules to relinquish some of that control for the betterment of the game. With our present pandemic challenges in mind, a CFC could mediate with the other football entities noted above national scheduling challenges such as uneven numbers of games played and bowl eligibility. 

A CFC's scheduling power could also be fun. It could prove particularly intriguing for all FBS institutions to offer at least one, if not two games, from its overall schedule---maybe one home and one away---that is scheduled by the CFC's office. The CFC's “bonus scheduling” formula could be driven by a balance of rarely seen match-ups, attendance draws, television windows, and cost-management. Alabama at Boise State to open the season on the blue turf in late August. Clemson at Northwestern in mid-October under a beautiful Chicago fall afternoon sky. Or how about Texas at Texas A&M in November? Rarely seen match-ups...anymore, if ever. It's like the suprise of a bowl-game match-up announcement, but for a tilt in the middle of the season.

The CFC’s scheduling role would be fostered by establishing trust and cooperation among the conference commissioners to ensure that decisions will be made in the best interest of college football and not necessarily the parochial interests of one or two conferences. It doesn’t mean micro-managing schedules that can be stewarded by the conferences and tv networks, but a centralized leader to guide and render some aspects of scheduling in the best interests of the game could be a positive adrenaline shot for the sport.

Alas, not all of college football's operational functions should be controlled by the CFC. What wouldn't fall under the CFC's responsibilities and where do we go from here? Tune in next week for the last installment on the viability of a CFC. 
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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.
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