Following a retreat organized by NCAA president Mark Emmert, it’s becoming increasingly clear that major BCS schools should form their own governing body.
Emmert brought together university presidents, conference commissioners and athletic directors for a two-day event in an effort to address what he believes are necessary revisions.
Those revisions are based on a proposal from SEC commissioner Mike Slive calling for a redefinition of benefits available to student-athletes, strengthening academic eligibility requirements, modernizing recruiting rules and improvements in the enforcement process.
Despite Emmert’s suggestion that a strong consensus existed for change, the two-day event only generated agreements that did little to address the major issues facing college athletics.
Of all the people in attendance at the event, Emmert, the former chancellor of LSU, should understand that the schools in the automatic qualifying BCS conferences are tired of being subjected to arcane NCAA guidelines.
The NCAA continues to believe that a “one size fits all” model of governing is the best way to maintain a level playing field, but that idea has long since passed its usefulness.
There are some in the NCAA that still operate under the illusion that academics and big time college athletics go hand in hand.
We saw evidence of that at the two-day meeting, where the major rule change voted on raised the academic progress rate from 925 to 930.
That rule change may appease the federal Department of Education, but it doesn’t address the financial issues facing college athletics.
Perhaps the NCAA believes that ignoring the real issues will eventually make them disappear, but sticking their heads in the sand isn’t going to make the elephant in the room go away.
This system, the one that allows basketball players to walk after one year and football players to leave school after three years, isn’t about academics.
It’s the same system that has made the NCAA the most useless, hypocritical organization on Earth, with perhaps the exception of the United Nations.
Notre Dame and Boise State should join the schools in the SEC, Pac-12, Big 12, Big Ten, ACC, and Big East to begin the process of letting the NCAA know what life would be like without them.
The fact is, those schools don’t need the NCAA.
The NCAA isn’t about academics, it’s about money and lots of it. Despite the calls for sweeping changes, the board of directors swept the real problems under the rug.
And the only way those issues are going to be dealt with effectively is for the schools who make the NCAA what it is to tackle them under their own umbrella.
