Power 5 Conferences to take control in January 2022

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I’m surprized that this topic has not been posted yet, as it directly and permanently affects the status of the Big East as a ‘Power 6’ basketball conference.

On Monday, November 8th, the NCAA announced that a vote will be held at the NCAA Convention in January 2022 to give the Power 5 conferences total autonomy in how they structure themselves, govern themselves, make new rules, and the investigation and enforce of their rules – in essence, the end of Division I as we know it. This has been brewing for a long time, but the beginning of the end has officially arrived. Read on.

Power Five, NCAA are now officially adversaries, and a breakaway may only be a matter of time - Dennis Dodd, CBS Sports - August 3, 2020

As the Power Five consolidates power, the NCAA is losing its grip on authority and membership value

The showdown is now out in the open. What was hinted at as a possibility in the past is formally a conflict that could have reverberations in the future. Actually, it's worse than a conflict. The NCAA and the Power Five are officially adversaries. That much was obvious Saturday night when CBS Sports confirmed a story Sports Illustrated first reported about the willingness of the Power Five to stage its own championships in fall sports (other than football) if the NCAA Board of Governors cancels them this week.

That board, comprised mostly of administrators and campus CEOs, is the NCAA's top governing body. The NCAA does not sponsor a championship for the 130 FBS teams. That is controlled by the 10 FBS conferences, ESPN and the College Football Playoff. By cancelling those other fall championships, the board knows it would be painting the FBS into a corner. The optics would not be good if the championships in eight sports were canceled amid the COVID-19 pandemic yet big-time college football played on. But by cancelling those championships, the board might set in motion an eventual breakaway from the NCAA by the Power Five-- the 65 total schools from the nation's largest most powerful conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC) plus Notre Dame.

Simply put, those power conferences have thought for a while they could do it better than the NCAA. They've increasingly lost faith in the association.

And so, at this inflection point, it's not so much that the Power Five will break away to conduct its own championships. It's that it has reached the point where such a move is financially and systematically possible.

It may only be a matter of time. The Power Five has the money, leverage and -- as we now know -- willingness to break away. A group of schools that can't agree on much -- including scheduling, as we're seeing now -- have agreed to stare down the NCAA, at least on this issue. Earlier this summer, CBS Sports detailed how that breakaway could occur amid the growing dissatisfaction between the NCAA and the Power Five conferences.

NCAA Constitution Committee Introduces Draft Constitution – NCAA.org - November 8, 2021

Current draft provides significant authority to the divisions

NCAA unveils modernized constitution draft with divisions granted increased governing power - Dennis Dodd, CBS Sports - November 8, 2021

Significant changes could come to NCAA governance and enforcement in the new constitution

The NCAA appears poised to step away from its role as a powerful -- and sometimes heavy-handed -- oversight body of its 1,100 members. The association on Monday released of a long-awaited draft of a reworked constitution. The document indicates the NCAA will no longer push back against name, image and likeness rights. It will also relinquish enforcement responsibilities, sending them down to the three divisions. The document will now be sent to members for feedback and potential amendments before a vote is held at the NCAA Convention in January 2022. The draft was developed over the last three months by a 28-person Constitution Committee chaired by former U.S. secretary of defense Robert Gates.

The NCAA now "embraces" name, image and likeness while prohibiting pay-for-play as stated in the draft. It makes no mention of the NCAA's pursuit of Congressional intervention for an exemption that would create a federal standard. Since NIL started July 1, college athletics has proceeded largely as it has in the past.

For the first time, the NCAA would leave enforcement of its rules to the divisions and conferences themselves, according to the draft. Schools are currently compelled to report violations promptly to the NCAA. The draft states members must "report all rules violations to its respective NCAA division and conference in a timely manner." There are currently three divisions within the NCAA.

That leads to a huge question of what enforcement will look like in Division I, the most competitive level, which also has subdivisions for football. No mention is made of how enforcement would be structured or by whom.

The constitution draft also allows divisions "authority and autonomy" to "restructure themselves." That could be the foreshadowing of federalization where a group of schools within a division split off. For example, the FBS, which currently holds 130 members across 10 conferences, could further divide itself along the lines of its autonomy conferences (Power Five).

An NCAA Transformation Committee co-chaired by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is currently discussing "what it means to be a Division I member and how a division should be organized."

What NCAA Constitution Draft Tells Us: More Power, More Money for Schools - Ross Dellenger, SI.com - November 8, 2021

The latest 19-page draft could lead to new restructuring of Division I and FBS.

The NCAA on Monday released a draft of its new constitution, a significantly condensed 19-page version with some expected but notable changes. Members will haggle over the draft ahead of next week’s virtual NCAA Constitution Convention, while also looking to the next and most important step in this process: restructuring Division I governance.

But let’s turn our attention back to that constitution draft. It embraces athlete compensation (name, image and likeness), remakes the Board of Governors and gives athletes a larger role in decision-making, among other things. To the casual fan, these are uninteresting matters. To school administrators, these are significant changes that will lead to even more significant, and interesting, changes to the Division I structure.

Here is a rundown of the proposed changes to the constitution and what it could mean if approved:

• A shrinking and less important Board of Governors

• Revenue split

• A path to restructure

This is the most significant change to the new constitution: It allows each division to organize itself in a different way than previously done. That includes creating “subdivisions” or a “new division,” the constitution says. This is Step 2 of the process. After the constitution is approved in January, a separate working group will reorganize Division I to allow the money-making, blue-blood programs more power in making rules. FBS teams may split in some way while remaining under the NCAA umbrella.

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More relevant information:

ACC Network - Wikipedia

The ACC Network (ACCN) is an American multinational subscription-television channel owned and operated by ESPN Inc. Dedicated to coverage of the Atlantic Coast Conference, it was announced in July 2016 and launched on August 22, 2019.

Sports Media Rights: Current TV Deals and What’s on the Horizon - John Cassillo, TV Revolution.com - February 18, 2021

Going year by year, a quick breakdown on what’s due for a new contract and who could be involved.

2023: SEC deal with CBS expires (already picked up by ESPN).

2024: Big Ten deals expire and Pac-12 deal expires.

2025: Big 12 deals expire and Big East deals expire.

NCAA Has Confirmed Its Basketball Revenue Distribution Plan For 2021, But Impact Of 2020 Will Linger - Kristi Dosh, Forbes - February 28, 2021

For institutions in the Power Five conferences, distributions from the NCAA account for a lower percentage of total revenue than in the mid-majors due to the television rights contracts those conferences each has with one or more major networks. Those television rights contracts are estimated to get approximately 80% of their value from football and 20% of their value from basketball.

Fox TV Contract Year. Basketball Season

1. 2013-14 . . . . . 7. 2019-20
2. 2014-15 . . . . . 8. 2020-21 (11-member conference)
3. 2015-16 . . . . . 9. 2021-22 (11-member conference)
4. 2016-17 . . . . 10. 2022-23
5. 2017-18 . . . . 11. 2023-24
6. 2018-19 . . . . 12. 2024-25

The practical effect of the Power 5’s power grab is to reduce college athletic into two divisions: (1) The Power 5 Conferences, and (2) everybody else.

Beginning in 2022 or 2023 (or whenever the ‘new arrangements’ take effect), the Power 5 will simply start doing what is in their best interests. And that will leave the Big East in the ‘everybody else’ category, making Big East expansion in 2025 far more likely. The Big East (and more importantly, their future TV Right partner) will want/need to get as many eyes as possible watching Big East basketball games on TV.

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2022 NCAA CONVENTION - NCAA.org

January 19-22, 2022 • Indianapolis

For information about the 2021 NCAA Special Convention on November 15, 2021, please click here.

The in-person 2022 NCAA Convention will be held in Indianapolis from Wednesday, Jan. 19, to Saturday, Jan. 22, more than a week after the College Football Playoff championship game (January 10th) and during the week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 17th).

2021 NCAA Special Convention Meeting Schedule: Monday, November 15, 2021 - NCAA.org

How College Sports May Change Under Proposed N.C.A.A. Rule Revisions - Alan Blinder, The New York Times - November 15, 2021

The notoriously bureaucratic N.C.A.A. is gearing up for debates about what it should look like going forward.

Why is the N.C.A.A. doing this?

Mostly because it realizes it does not have much choice.

The N.C.A.A. has been a legal pincushion for years, and it has lately come under scrutiny not just from the courts but also politicians at the state and federal levels. The Supreme Court’s ruling this summer, though, alarmed many industry officials because it left the N.C.A.A. even more vulnerable to challenges under antitrust law.

The push to rewrite the constitution amounts to an effort to give the N.C.A.A. more legal cover, though Gates denied that was the association’s principal motivation. Either way, some scholars are skeptical that the N.C.A.A. will improve its legal position significantly and believe that the association will still wind up fighting plenty of court battles.

When could these changes take hold?

Monday’s convention is just one step. A five-day feedback period will follow. Then the Gates committee, which held eight virtual meetings, as well as in-person sessions in Chicago and Denver, will review the submissions before opening a second opportunity for feedback. Gates’s panel will submit its final recommendations to the board on Dec. 15, the same day that N.C.A.A. members may begin to propose amendments.

The N.C.A.A. expects to vote on a new constitution on Jan. 20. More months of work will follow, though, as Divisions I, II and III sort through their own plans. Gates predicted members would offer amendments, but said he would be “quite surprised if this constitution or something that looks very much like it” did not pass. But he said he had not begun counting votes.

This seems like a mess.

Well, it is the N.C.A.A.

Asked in a September interview with The Times whether the N.C.A.A. or the Pentagon had the more daunting organization chart, Gates laughed and replied: “Well, they’re comparable — and incomprehensible. They look like an AT&T wiring diagram.” But a lot of people will get to have a say before the N.C.A.A makes any substantive changes, especially changes that could ease all, or even some, of the bureaucracy.

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