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.
Heavy is the Head that Wears the Institutional Control Crown
Executive Summary
Per the NCAA Constitution, Presidents and Chancellors are the individuals on campus with ultimate authority over athletics
Athletics boards may be enacted by institutions, but there is no NCAA requirement that Division I schools have one.
Having an athletic board is one mechanism for maintaining faculty and other academic appointees’ involvement and oversight of a Division I athletics department’s operations.
NCAA Division I adopted a new attestation requirements for Presidents and Chancellors and Athletic Directors to sign as a means to stress executive-level ownership of the principle of institutional control
Which individual has the ultimate responsibility and final authority for the conduct of your athletics department? According to the NCAA Constitution, the proverbial institutional control buck stops with the president or chancellor on your campus.
NCAA Constitution 6.1.1 states:
A member institution's president or chancellor has ultimate responsibility and final authority for the conduct of the intercollegiate athletics program and the actions of any board in control of that program. The term "president or chancellor" refers to the individual with primary executive authority for an institution and does not include an individual who has executive responsibility over a system of institutions.
Financial oversight responsibilities pertaining to athletics are also designated for a president or chancellor as spelled out in NCAA Constitution 6.2.2:
The institution's president or chancellor or an institutional administrator designated by the president or chancellor from outside the athletics department shall approve the annual budget in the event that the institution's normal budgeting procedures do not require such action.
Over the years, some NCAA Division I institutions have constructed an athletics board or athletics advisory board to own and manage varying levels of authority over its athletics department, including athletics policies impacting the university’s athletics program (e.g., missed class time/excused absence policies for student-athletes traveling for away competition; minimum grade-point average requirements for student-athletes above and beyond any NCAA minimum).
A university’s athletics board oversight may also manifest itself in the form of periodic reviews and audits of athletic program budgets, NCAA compliance systems, legal affairs, and other operational activities---sometimes with the assistance of outside consultants. Boards may also have a sign-off role in transactional matters such as major hiring decisions (think football or men's or women's basketball head coach).
The NCAA does not require institutions to have an athletics board of any kind.
However, the NCAA Constitution states that if such a board exists, it must conform to the following composition requirements:
Administration and/or faculty staff members shall constitute at least a majority of the board in control of athletics or an athletics advisory board, irrespective of the president or chancellor's responsibility and authority or whether the athletics department is financed in whole or in part by student fees. If the board has a parliamentary requirement necessitating more than a simple majority in order to transact some or all of its business, then the administrative and faculty members shall be of sufficient number to constitute at least that majority.
An administrator (for purposes of this legislation) is an individual employed by the institution as a full-time administrative staff member who holds an academic appointment, is directly responsible to the institution's president or chancellor or serves as a chief administrative official (e.g., admissions director, finance officer, department head, or athletics department head). Other nonacademic staff members and individuals who are members of an institution's board of trustees or similar governing body would not be considered to be administrators for purposes of this regulation.
Back in 2006, the Division I membership entertained a proposal (2006-16) to mandate that each Division I member have an athletics board and, in turn, such a board have authority over athletics policies.
The rationale behind Proposal 2006-16 was that campus athletics boards play a key role in the integration of athletics into the university as a whole and thus, should be required and not discretionary. Prospectively, the board composition requirement would ensure appropriate faculty involvement in the overall checks and balances system designed to ensure academic integrity and athletics rule compliance. This concept was championed by the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA). The COIA is a network of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) universities’ faculty senates.
The proposal ultimately was defeated by the Division I Management Council. During the 2006-07 legislative cycle, the Division I Academics, Eligibility and Compliance Cabinet (AEC) went on record stating that having a board is a good idea to facilitate campus-level institutional control over its athletics programs, but spelling this out as an NCAA rule may be too prescriptive.
Ultimately, it was determined that Division I institutions should have discretion to decide how their athletics oversight mechanisms are structured, including whether to utilize an athletics board and, in turn, how big the board would be.
Even with that discretion left to institutional autonomy to this day, the NCAA does prescribe that if your institution goes down the road of enacting an athletics board to advise on your athletics policy, it needs to be built with a majority representation of faculty and administrators with academic appointments or department leads (e.g., Admissions Director; Financial Aid Director; Chief Financial Officer) that report directly to the president or chancellor.
If you are the president or chancellor on your campus, this is a good reminder that the buck stops with you in terms of authority over athletics. For all campus stakeholders, though, have you checked whether your institution has an athletics board? If yes, what composition does it keep? How many faculty and academic appointees serve on it? The NCAA’s beeline for the academics to help maintain institutional control over athletics remains alive through this section of the NCAA manual.
More recently, the Division I membership’s urgency to advance awareness, visibility, and ownership by presidents and chancellors, and concurrently athletics directors, over their respective athletics programs was never more evident than with the adoption of Division I Proposals 2018-11 and 2019-12.
These adopted proposals, collectively, compel presidents, chancellors, and athletic directors to put their name behind their institution's commitment to institutional control and NCAA rules compliance. The adopted proposals require an institution's president or chancellor to attest that he or she understands the institutional obligations and personal responsibilities imposed by NCAA Constitution 2.1 (Principle of Institutional Control and Responsibility) and Constitution 2.8 (Principle of Rules Compliance).
Further, athletics directors must attest the same understandings as the president or chancellor as well as review, or designate someone to review, with all athletics department staff members the rules and regulations of the NCAA as they apply to the administration and conduct of intercollegiate athletics. Athletic directors must also certify that all athletics department staff are aware of ther personal responsibilities and expectations imposed by the NCAA Constitutional provisions noted above; and certify the athletics department's policies, procedures, and practices are compliant at the time of attestation. The more recent proposal (2019-12) intentionally brought athletics directors in to a more hands-on role with the attestions noting athletics directors have the direct, day-to-day oversight of their institution's athletics department.
The adopted proposals further specified that a president or chancellor who fails to complete the annual institutional eligibility certification by October 15 shall subject his or her institution to being ineligible for all team and individual NCAA championships and removal from and/or ineligibility of individuals from the institution to serve on an NCAA board, council or committee. The spirit of these proposals were borne from the work of the Commission on College Basketball that was convened by NCAA President Mark Emmert after the fallout of the FBI’s investigation into allegations of corruption in the Division I men’s basketball recruiting environment.
In the end, these proposals require attestations that the institution has control of its intercollegiate athletics program in compliance with the rules and regulations of the Association, that its programs are monitored to assure compliance and that instances in which compliance has not been achieved are identified and reported to the Association. In addition, the president or chancellor and athletics staff must attest that in instances of noncompliance, the institution will cooperate fully with the Association and take appropriate corrective actions.
Some may deem the president and chancellor attestation (and athletics director attestion) requirement a ceremonial exercise or even bureaucratic overkill noting the heart of these NCAA principles and expectations are not new to the Division I membership. At the same time, the disconcerting developments stemming from the men's basketball scandal that reached coast to coast may more than justify this call to integrity, compliance and control.
Regardless of where one comes out on the necessity of these annual steps, the awareness level and dialogue around universities’ central leadership promoting NCAA compliance and maintaining control of their athletics programs has increased by virtue of the attestations -- and that is a positive.
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.
