The NCAA Division I board of directors voted 16-2 Thursday to allow the schools in the top five conferences to create their own destiny. The autonomy measures will permit those leagues to decide on issues like cost-of-attendance stipends and insurance benefits for players, staff sizes, recruiting rules and mandatory hours spent on individual sports.
The vote’s passage will keep Division I together. It was accomplished with a sledge hammer approach. Some conference commissioners and other senior athletic officials from the power five leagues made veiled threats about splitting off into a separate division if autonomy failed.
The vote will undoubtedly create an a wider gap between the 65 schools in the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12 and the rest of Division I. Those leagues can submit their own legislation by Oct. 1 and have it enacted at the Jan. 2015 NCAA convention in Washington, D.C.
The first item on the docket is expected to be the full cost-of-attendance stipends, which could be worth between $2,000 and $5,000 per player. The NCAA approved those stipends three years ago, but legislation was stopped when the full membership voted it down. Four-year scholarship guarantees are also expected to be on the earliest agenda. Other proposals include loosened restrictions involving contact between players and agents, letting players pursue outside paid career opportunities, and covering expenses for players’ families to attend postseason games.
Not surprisingly, several of the new rules being proposed involve giving athletes more benefits. The NCAA faces attack from several quarters, including the Ed O’Bannon lawsuit, the Northwestern union movement and even Congressional investigations, all of which pose a threat to the way college sports are run.
There were some compromises before the vote was taken that should ease the pain for the non-power conferences. Areas that will not fall under autonomy include postseason tournaments, transfer policies, scholarship limits, signing day and rules governing on-field play.
