Last month, the professional organization representing FBS athletic directors issued what amounted to a veiled ultimatum. The “overwhelming majority” of those ADs at a Lead1 Association meeting in Washington D.C. had a “strong preference” the NCAA continue to run college football if the association “can be more streamlined and less bureaucratic.”
The answer opened the door to perhaps not a breakup of major college football and basketball but at least an emerging picture of what a new structure would look like. A growing number of those ADs believe they have a unique and powerful hammer as leverage if the NCAA doesn’t clean up its act.
“If not,” said a Lead1 executive. “We would explore other options.”
Among those implied options, CBS Sports has learned, is leveraging schools’ participation in the NCAA Tournament. While a separate basketball tournament operated outside the NCAA is not likely in the near future, the realization of the ADs they could create such an event provides a picture as to how the two largest sports of the NCAA will be run in the future.
A football breakout has long been discussed — it’s more likely than one in basketball — as the NCAA’s power wanes as membership has called for a reorganization of the 117-year-old organization.
About 80 FBS ADs traveled to the mid-September Lead1 meeting in person. Another 20 participated virtually, putting 100 out of 131 total in participation. They saw two compelling presentations made by former West Virginia AD and NCAA executive Oliver Luck and North Carolina associate professor of sports administration Erianne Weight.
One presentation was a model where college football continues to operate within the NCAA. The other showed the FBS becoming “completely independent” from the NCAA, according to a source.
“It was about as unanimous as it could be,” Lead1 CEO Tom McMillen said of his membership’s reaction to soccer’s ruling. “It was, ‘Fix it or we’ll seriously consider moving options.'”
Basketball is involved in the discussion because the revenue from the NCAA Tournament is used by the association to essentially run college football.
The NCAA does not sponsor an FBS championship. Meanwhile, the tournament is the mother’s milk of the association itself bringing in about $800 million a year. About 80% of that goes back to the members.
McMillen likened more oversight of college sports by its members to an “exemption petition.” In parliamentary procedure, such action means bringing a bill to the floor for a vote without a committee report.
In this case, that “committee” represents the bureaucracy of the NCAA.
“If the ADs stand together, they can accomplish almost anything,” McMillen said.
Lead1 is essentially an advisory group when it comes to NCAA matters, but change has to start somewhere.
Ohio State AD Gene Smith raised eyebrows last summer when he suggested to ESPN that the College Football Playoff take over FBS. He was not alone. In December 2020, the reform-minded Knight Commission essentially suggested the same thing.
Lead1 and its members hope to gain more power over college sports as the NCAA remakes itself through a rewritten constitution that will give more power to the schools.
To that end, Lead1 was encouraged to see its views gain ground recently when the NCAA adopted seven of its 11 recommendations. Among these was the removal of the much-criticized Independent Accountability Resolution Process.
The future of basketball was not discussed formally last month. Various college officials came out of that Lead1 meeting claiming that there is no grant of rights between the Division I schools and the NCAA that binds them to play in March Madness. The grant of rights is most commonly known as a documentary school sign that assigns their television rights to their conference. Lead1 executives and other ADs confirmed to CBS Sports that there is no such binding document.
“It’s not iron,” McMillen said. “That’s my quote. It’s just not ironic [that they participate].”
When asked what ties those schools to the tournament, NCAA general counsel Scott Bearby referred CBS Sports to Rule 31.2.1.1 It states: Eligible members in a sport … will participate [if elected] in the NCAA championship or in any postseason in that sport .
“I don’t know the consequence, for example, if a team that qualified for a conference automatic bid, their choice [was] not to participate,” Bearby told CBS Sports. “I don’t know what that would mean.”
While there is no overt movement for Division I to stage its own basketball tournament, the National Association of Basketball Coaches is on record as saying it would like to establish a governing body for the game but within the NCAA structure. (NABC president Craig Robinson provided no comment when contacted.)
Most importantly, for the first time during that Lead1 meeting, a price tag was put on what it would take to run the FBS: $65 million annually. That figure was revealed during a slide presentation by Kathleen McNeely, the former CFO of the NCAA and currently a Lead1 consultant. (McNeely did not comment but gave Lead1 official permission to describe her performance in detail with CBS Sports.)
An outside entity taking over the FBS would be less about affordability and more about accountability. That $65 million represents 10% of the current annual CFP payout ($600 million) and even less (about 4%) of the projected annual payout in an expanded 12-team CFP field.
However, the NCAA has long been a target practice for lawyers seeking retribution for clients with catastrophic injuries. The association also spends millions each year defending itself in lawsuits brought against the NCAA and conferences.
As mentioned, building a tournament outside of the NCAA structure would be a massive lift. And there is little indication that college presidents, who have the ultimate say, are disaffected enough to make such a dramatic move. However, acknowledging the fact that they could reflect some of the dissatisfaction.
“I wouldn’t worry about the basketball tournament falling apart yet,” said a source at the meeting. “I think there’s a widespread acceptance of the tournament as the place to be if you’re a college basketball team.”
Football remains key because its presence within the system was a significant reason the NCAA generated a record $1.16 billion in revenue last season.
Division I consists of 351 members, many of which derive much of their budget from NCAA revenue distribution, much of which comes from the tournament.
But as part of the massive NCAA reorganization that is in progress, Power Five schools hope to have more input in how the NCAA is run.
That’s where the streamlining of management comes in. In the absence of a breakout, football and basketball could be split up into different chunks shared between the NCAA and the schools.
“If FBS football says, ‘We don’t want to have NCAA enforcement. We want to have our own enforcement and whatever we’re going to enforce recruiting,’ that could be a model,” said one person in the room.
One source suggested eliminating the NCAA Football Oversight Committee, which is responsible for kicking legislation up to the NCAA Council. The composition of the committee is part of the problem for Power Five managers. Only five of the 18 members are from Power Five schools.
The new FBS governing body for the entire sport could be half that size.
For example, NCAA eligibility and amateurism are mostly dead discussion points. Rules about names, image and likeness removed all that was left of the collegiate (amateur) model. Initial eligibility is largely left to schools.
There is a movement within Lead1 that would imitate what the Knight Commissioner proposed: to establish a board that would at least control the sport and answer to what was called a commissioner or CEO of major college football.
CBS Sports took a deep dive into a potential football breakout in June.
The $65 million needed to make such a move is likely the first time a number has been attached to the FBS. That’s where the conflict comes in. Over the years, bowl games, the BCS and the College Football Playoff have been stewards of college football. The NCAA basically set game and practice rules and provided disaster insurance by overseeing the sport with its enforcement department.
As the NCAA has become less important and powerful in recent years, many have questioned why the association should control the FBS at all.
For any entity to take over the FBS, it would inherit the legal liability estimated by McNeely to be at least $10 million annually. That doesn’t count any massive legal settlement that could affect the NCAA’s legal exposure in any given year, she warned.
The advantage of that arrangement is the NCAA remaining a “legal shield” against any incoming lawsuit.
“They’re the first line of defense,” McMillen said. “Whoever would take this over would not only have to pay the current legal bills of $10 million a year, but [McNeely said] you would have to have a big reserve — $20-plus million a year in case you had settlements.”
There is also health and wellness, insurance, office and regulatory enforcement involved in that $65 million. All of it makes it unlikely that a third party would take over the entirety of the FBS.
The Knight Commission continues to argue that FBS schools receive NCAA revenue and have a weighted voting advantage in governance despite being a sport that, again, the association basically did not sponsor. The commission pointed out that the NCAA “received $0 in revenue from FBS football,” but assumes legal liability and catastrophic insurance costs.
“The CFP wants to be seen as an event management company,” said Knight Commission executive director Amy Perko. “That’s fine if that’s all. But the CFP by its actions acts as more than an event management company because they value the schools and conferences that are part of their deal… If you’re just an event manager, you’re passing the buck to the governing body to figure out how they share the revenue.”
Instead, the conferences themselves decide how to share the CFP revenue, 78% of which goes to the Power Five conferences.
“Only sports in which the NCAA conducts championships are eligible for revenue distribution,” said a Lead1 official. “So, they make an exception for football. That’s part of the controversy.”
In 2010, the NCAA signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal with CBS and Turner to televise the NCAA Tournament. An eight-year extension was signed in 2016 that takes the contract through 2032. With the rapidly changing television landscape, critics said NCAA president Mark Emmert signed a deal that would later be undervalued in the marketplace.
The Big Ten alone signed a media rights deal in August for more than $8 billion over seven years.
