What is Next for the NCAA?

Yep, all scholarship athletes get an equal piece of the football TV playoff money. Then they can get more for their sneaker deals or commercials on top of that. A private business doesn't have to obey Title IX.

 

Good luck with that.

 

Something like that is coming. The NCAA already passed a rule to allow stipends, then backed down because some of the small schools complained. But the door has been opened.

And the O'Bannon lawsuit is opening up the possibility that athletes own their own likenesses.

 

Tax the revenues generated by each individual sport. The athletic departments at major NCAA schools are not the "non-profit education centers" that the names on its uniforms might suggest. Each sport is a business; make them pay taxes.

 

BTW here is one description of Emmert's press conference today:

What you won’t find in the transcript are comments Emmert directed at CBSsports.com’s Dennis Dodd, who suggested in a Feb. column that Emmert should resign.

(Not an unreasonable position given the state of the NCAA under his watch.)

So during Thursday’s press conference, Emmert says to Dodd: “By the way, thanks for the career advice. I kept my job anyway.”

Then, as he left the room, Emmert added: “I’m still here. I know you’re disappointed.”

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/collegesports/2013/04/04/ncaa-tournament-best-bets-for-the-final-four-and-emmerts-feisty-press-conference/

 

Didn't realize that Jim Calhoun is consulting with the NCAA on public relations.

The whole mess kind of reminds me of that line in North Dallas 40 about "When I call it a sport, you call it a business," except colleges try to play "we're an educational institution" card as well to cover up their shortcomings when it comes to enforcement and business dealings.

 

Found this part particularly ridiculous:

What are your thoughts on the current transfer rules? Do you support the proposal to allow kids with a 2.6 GPA or better to transfer without having to sit out a year?
PRESIDENT EMMERT: My current attitude to the rule changes are in general that we're making some really terrific progress. I'm very pleased we're making some headway in eliminating the minutia. There's still a lot of it in there, but the rules working group is trying to damp that down. I think they made a lot of really good proposals. The membership has endorsed all but a handful of those issues.
I think the transfer issue is very complicated. You need to try to find a balance where the young men and young women that are playing sports have legitimate opportunities to transfer. You want to make sure that they can be academically successful. We know that transferring decreases the probability of academic success. So having an academic connection to that I think is a sensible thing to do.
But on the other hand, you also don't want to have a circumstance where, you know, you've got coaches that are recruiting each other's teams every season off of their bench. You need to have some stability. You need to have a way for programs to make long‑term commitments to young men and women and vice versa.
It's a very complex issue. There's a lot of arguments on all sides of that one. That's a long‑winded way of saying, you know, I'm going to leave that one up to coaches and people that really understand the dynamics of it, because I'm not sure, and I don't know that anyone is right now, what the right model is.

Transferring decreases the possiblity of academic success? Thousands of kids each year transfer to different schools for a variety of reasons. If transferring decreased the possiblity of getting their degree, they wouldn't be transferring, would they?

And stability and long-term commitments? Um, then pass a rule saying that head coaches cannot jump from school to school if they are under contract.

 

Especially odd considering that the NCAA is now requiring a 2.3 GPA in "core subjects" in high school is an effort to improve chances at college success. So a 2.3 in high school is a better measure than a 2.6 in college. Yeah, I can see why this guy is in charge of college athletics.

 

Just reclassify all schools Div. III.

 

Eventually, and I don't know the reason that will serve as the beginning of the end, but a team or group of team will realize they can exist just fine without the NCAA and go their separate ways. They'll write their own rules on recruiting and everything else in the rule book that they've ignored. It's easy to envision the NCAA being out of business within a decade or two. Of course, this won't mean college athletics is any better. It'll probably be far worse than it is now.