The richest football playing schools in the NCAA are on the verge of getting richer and becoming more powerful. A vote Thursday is expeced to give them more freedom to govern themselves and could allow their student-athletes to share in a piece of that wealth.
The so-called Big 5 conferences– the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12– have always interested in separating themselves from the rest of the 350 Diviison I schools in the NCAA. But the gap is about to get wider if the NCAA Board of Directors votes Thursday to give these schools the autonomy to begin compensating their athletes with stipends to cover the full clost of college atttence over and above the scholarships they receive and give them better medical coverage and allow them to borrow against future earnings to purchase disability coverage.
They have already seperated themselves from the rest of college athletics in football, where the new four team playoff will have limited access to those five conference with only one guaranteed sport in a BCS game for the other five conferrences.
In the new world order, the number of scholarships is expected to remain the same for all Division I schools and all schools will be allowed to participate in all championships. But it may not be long before the power schools vote to demand a higher percentage of revenue in these post-season events. Despite a push from the Big 12 to do away with transfer rules that would allow any athlete to transfer without penalty and open the door for the big schools to cherry pick the best athletes from the rest of the 350 D I schools, transfer rules are expected to remain in base.
Autonomy is expected to pass for one simple reason– if it is rejected, the Big 5 commissioners have threatened to leave the NCAA all together and form theri own Division I, which could water down the NCAA product and put it in a terrible negotiating position with TV for the rights to its biggest events like March Madness without the marquee programs..
The NCAA, which has been under seige since the spring from the Ed O’Bannon anti-trust case, which seeks financial compensaation for athletes whose names and likeless appear on TV; and a union movement at Northwestern. The NCAA is deperately trying to avoid its own demise.
Change is coming and the NCAA knows it, which may be why it is likely to approve a push toward four year scholarships and the NCAA relaxed its rules on how much foot universities can provide athletes in season, issued new concusion guidelines and are no longer pressuring athletes to sign a statement allow conferences use of their names and likeness.
The NCAA, which has been under seige since the spring from the Ed O’Bannon anti-trust case, which seeks financial compensaation for athletes whose names and likeless appear on TV; and a union movement at Northwestern. The NCAA is deperately trying to avoid its own demise.
The Power 5 conferences, with the revenue they produce from football attendance and their lucrative TV rights deal, can afford this. But other schools like Temple– which dropped several sports last year to support football– may be forced to eliminate non-revenue sports and the weakest of the other non-football playing schools do just do away with specific non-revenue sports or turn them into club sports in an attempt to remain relevant in the revenue producing sports. .
The notion of amateur athletes playing college sports is dying as we speak. College athletes will officially become a business Thursday. Did anyone think it was ever an equal playing field?.
