Insights, Impacts, and Reactions to the Initial Set of Concepts Proposed by the Division I Transformation Committee
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Radical Change in the Air: Insights, Impacts, and Reactions to the Initial Set of Concepts Proposed by the Division I Transformation Committee
Executive Summary
The Division I Transformation Committee is beginning to float what some are dubbing as “radical” changes to the NCAA regulatory landscape.
Key changes proposed include eliminating scholarship caps in sports that only offer partial scholarships; abolishing limitations on number of coaches per team; and expanding direct payments from schools to athletes.
The recommendation on removing scholarship caps could hasten the already-widening divide between the "haves" and "have nots" in Division I and could cause some schools to reconsider their sport portfolio.
Permitting all Division I sports to be full scholarship and to do away with the equivalency sport concept will inevitably bring the application of Title IX to the forefront.
The ability for student-athletes to receive money beyond their scholarship due to NIL and Alston award bonuses may call to question where federal financial aid policies end and where taxable income unrelated to collegiate enrollment begin.
There is significant upside for coaches, operational staffers and compliance officials if the recruiting calendar is simplified.
Implementing "closed periods" for the transfer portal is a timely response to challenges arising for coaches, who at times must manage and develop a stable roster from one season to the next as well as throughout the calendar year.
Some of the proposed concepts would only be enacted at the conference-level should a conference choose to pursue that path.
These concepts are only a fraction of the broader scope of work the Transformation Committee is charged with delivering.
AV offers impacts, contextual considerations, and realities to the proposed concepts.
According to a Sports Illustrated article published last week, potentially seismic-shifting concepts are being floated by the Division I Transformation Committee to Division I stakeholders, beginning with last week’s Lead1 Conference for Division I Athletic Directors.
“Change is coming,” said one athletic director to Sports Illustrated. “We better get prepared. We shouldn’t be shocked if all this does happen.”
“Every G5 AD is like, ‘Holy s---!’” says one Group of 5 athletic director who attended the presentation. The ‘Group of 5’ is the colloquial name for the FBS conferences outside the “Power 5.”
Per the article, several anonymous sources identified concepts being presented by the Transformation Committee. The concepts include:
(1) eliminating scholarship caps on sports that offer only partial scholarships;
(2) abolishing the limitation on the number of coaches per team;
(3) expanding direct payments from schools to athletes;
(4) reconfiguring the recruiting calendar; and
(5) implementing closed periods in the NCAA transfer portal.
AV provides initial reactions, contextual considerations, and potential impacts for each of these concepts that are beginning to circulate through the hallways of Division I athletic departments and conference offices nation-wide.
Eliminating scholarship caps on sports that offer only partial scholarships
For many years, the scholarship limits in Bylaw 15 were due for wholesale review and modernization— so the NCAA membership isn’t shocked that this area is on the radar of the Transformation Committee. Sport participation trends, roster sizes in Division I, and changes to NCAA athletically-related financial aid policies (e.g., the inclusion of cost of attendance money in athletic scholarships since 2017) has shifted the landscape in the past 20 years.
Partial scholarship sports or, sometimes referred to as equivalency scholarship sports, would take a hard pivot if suddenly all of these athletes could be on full athletics scholarship.
The obvious take-away from this concept is that it’s giving Athletic Directors, CFOs, and Development Officers collective heartburn to generate more money to stay competitive. This is one marker that could hasten more divisions (or subdivisions) among the current Division I landscape. Is it fair if one baseball team is all on full scholarships competing regularly against another team full of 25-35% partial scholarships? The gap in talent will begin crystalizing should this recommendation come to pass.
This recommendation also may provide fuel for universities to reconsider their sport sponsorship portfolio. Some called the pandemic the perfect cover for universities and their athletic departments to down-size their sports portfolio.
Permitting all Division I sports to be full scholarship and to do away with the equivalency sport concept will inevitably bring the application of Title IX to the forefront. Could a federal legislative solution, or solutions, to college athletics’ ills provide a path for universities to cut a couple of sports so that student-athletes in other sports could financially benefit with full scholarships instead of partials? This recommendation is rife with complexity that goes beyond the NCAA manual.
Abolishing the Limitation on the Number of Coaches per Team
AV believes this concept is more digestible in 2022 than it was ten years ago. For one, the transfer portal and NIL dynamics carry far more weight today than the number of coaches on the sideline when it comes to “competitive equity” implications. Whether a fifth or sixth person is instructing your basketball student-athletes on how to run an out-of-bounds play hasn’t been grabbing headline news in college sports of late.
Head coaches of sports are the best arbiters of who should be instructing the student-athletes on their team. It is its own version of coaching economics– there is a point of diminishing returns in terms of the number of people for one team coaching its student-athletes. At some point, an advantage of having more coaches could eventually lead to too many cooks in the kitchen and instructional chaos and confusion. To be fair, larger rostered sports may be most susceptible to competitive advantage disparities in terms of coach-to-athlete ratios.
Nonetheless, this recommendation from the Transformation Committee is one of the more actionable concepts to implement. Not to mention, the bureaucracy tied in to coaching limits would go away— less monitoring and less compliance paperwork. Less is more.
Expanding Direct Payments from Schools to Athletes
The "devil is in the details" might be the biggest understatement in this article. But for this recommendation, it holds true, especially now that some Division I schools are warming up to implementing Alston money awards (up to $5980 annually) to student-athletes.
Expanding the breadth, type, mode, and/or frequency of direct payments has direct implications on the NCAA’s amateurism (Bylaw 12) and financial aid (Bylaw 15) rules.
This concept may also spur on much needed workshopping with financial aid officers. The ability for student-athletes to receive more money beyond their scholarship in the form of NIL and Alston award bonuses may call to question where federal financial aid policies end and where taxable income unrelated to collegiate enrollment begin.
Reconfiguring the Recruiting Calendar
“Reconfiguring” might be underselling what needs to happen with recruiting calendars. The reality is, men’s and women’s basketball and football almost perennially tinker with their recruiting calendar in some way. Women’s basketball just adopted another “recruiting model” to overhaul its prior iteration.
Simplicity seems to be a driving force, and rightfully so, behind this concept. The Division I recruiting rules across Bylaw 13 and the recruiting calendar, therein, have too many spokes to the wheel. Too many recruiting periods, too many nuances to if, who, when, and where a coach (or staff member) could be involved in recruiting on or off-campus.
Creating two distinct recruiting periods and eliminating the various shades of recruiting could be a welcome reset for all sports. This simplified approach would also benefit the compliance side of operations – the constant churning of monitoring, logging, and related compliance red-tape activity that is naturally connected to recruiting. It is no mistake that, by far, the top area in which Level III violations occur is in recruiting. Simplifying that part of the college athletics life cycle has significant upside.
For this concept to gain traction, though, the coaches associations and their member coaches will need to get on board with the simplicity, which in turn could create more pressure to develop a program-level recruiting philosophy (translate: when and where do we need to recruit?) when the recruiting calendar doesn’t spell it out for a coaching staff.
Implementing Closed Periods in the NCAA Transfer Portal
NCAA Division I transfer rules currently require student-athletes to provide written notification to their institution by certain deadlines based on which season their sport’s championship season are held. For fall and winter sport student-athletes, they need to notify their institution by May 1 of their intent to enter transfer portal and for spring sport student-athletes, the deadline is July 1.
The current landscape leaves a wide-open expanse as it relates to predicting transfer activity and, with it, the uncertainty around rosters is snowballing. If, whether, and when a student-athlete will decide to put their name in the portal has become anyone’s guess except for the singular legislated deadline being the only beacon.
The singular deadlines have not induced order. There has been more than one time-frame in which a team sees a transfer portal spike within the same year. For example, fall sports like football or women’s soccer may see an uptick of transfer portal entries in December right after their regular championship season concludes. Yet, those same teams in those sports may see a second wave of transfer portal entrants in April or May when their spring non-championship segment has concluded and depth charts for the following year may have distilled.
The concept of transfer windows is not a historically significant one in NCAA circles because the transfer portal is in its infancy. Yet, this concept is a timely one that is responsive to initial challenges emerging with managing and developing a stable roster from one season to the next and, in turn, not inviting problematic trends with late-in-cycle admissions applications and hurried enrollment decisions.
Localization is Here - Closing Thoughts on the initial Transformation Committee Concepts
Simplicity will call on schools to make decisions for their backyard without the luxury of the usual one-size fits all NCAA rule book. Whether deciding to amp up scholarship amounts in partial scholarship sports or expand the number of individuals to handle coaching duties for your sports, there are budgetary, staffing, and philosophical considerations awaiting to be sorted on-campus or at least at annual conference meetings.
The NCAA national office’s role in stewarding these conversations and decisions will be downshifted. The time is here for administrators, coaches, and university leaders to get comfortable with the uncomfortable– the one common thread underpinning these initial transformational concepts.
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.
