Larger parenthesis. Less bureaucracy. More benefits for athletes.
The NCAA’s Division I transformation committee concluded its work with a 22-page report released Tuesday that recommends a variety of changes at the top level of college sports, but only one is likely to grab attention of the average fan.
The committee recommended allowing 25% of the teams in sports sponsored by at least 200 schools to compete in championship events. That opens the door to a possible expansion of the March Madness basketball tournaments from 68 to 90 teams each.
The expansion of tournaments is not imminent and may not even be likely in the near future, even if the recommendation is adopted.
“Each sport will have the opportunity to look, comprehensively, at what the impact of the expanded brackets might be and if that is something they should pursue for their particular championship,” said the athletic director of the Ohio University’s Julie Cromer, who is co-chair of the committee.
• Schools and conferences should create student-athlete advisory committees, similar to those used by the NCAA to allow athletes to be more involved in decisions.
• Demand more accountability, training and certification for coaches.
The committee also recommended expanding the benefits allowed to athletes to include more travel pay, elite off-campus training, educational events and more money toward lodging and meals.
Under governance, the committee recommended the creation of sport-by-sport oversight committees similar to those used in basketball and football. A movement to decentralize the governance of college athletics was spurred by the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision against the NCAA in June 2021 in an antitrust case.
Shortly after that decision, Mark Emmert, now the outgoing president of the NCAA, called for changing the association’s power structure to create a more deregulated version of college sports. First, the NCAA simplified its constitution, cutting it by more than half to focus on the main goals of the association: to provide wide opportunities for participation in college sports and that those who participate remain students.
That set the stage for a broader overhaul of Division I, in which there are 363 Division I schools with athletic budgets ranging from more than $100 million a year to less than $10 million. The transformation committee was charged with reviewing Division I member qualifications, athlete benefits, access to championship events, revenue sharing, governance, enforcement and transfer rules.
From the beginning, Sankey tried to temper expectations about the committee’s work, indicating that what qualifies as Division I transformation has never been clearly defined by the board.
In recent months, it has become clear that while reforms will and could be made – the committee’s recommendations regarding sport-specific time periods when athletes could transfer and maintain immediate eligibility have already been adopted – a radical change does not happen.
“We now have a set of actions that will be presented to the board,” Sankey said. “And so, the opportunity to take this step in the change is before the NCAA … but as we say repeatedly, it must be a continuous effort to transform, not just a committee or a time.”
The committee instead gave several items to the NCAA Division I Legislative Modernization of the Rules Subcommittee, such as the elimination of the volunteer coach designation and a cap on recruiting visits.
For the Division I board, the committee recommended a review of the rules regarding athletes entering professional drafts and using agents.
As for the rules related to athletes cashing in on celebrity endorsement deals — a profound change in the past 18 months in college sports — the committee’s report made it clear that the solution is beyond the reach of the NCAA: “Congress is the only entity that can grant this. stability.”
NCAA and NCAA v. Alston, along with new state laws, allowed college athletes to begin monetizing their name, image and likeness and gave players additional benefits in education. But as the NCAA pie has gotten exponentially bigger, most athletes’ share of that pie is still crumbs.
