Is next college sports realignment a split from NCAA?

Dan Wolken and George Schroeder, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

College football's most powerful entities will assemble in Pasadena, Calif., this week for meetings that will determine several aspects of the new playoff system that begins in 2014. It will be a celebration of progress and riches for the schools involved and a validation of the bowl industry, which kept its seat at the table despite heavy criticism in recent years.

One group, though, will surely dominate the cocktail party and golf course conversations, even while its influence in the future of college football further weakens: the NCAA.

As college athletics sifts through an avalanche of foundational issues, the credibility and viability of its governing body has never been more in question. Among realignment that has deepened separation of the haves and have-nots, the legal challenges to the NCAA's amateurism model, an explosion in football and television money and embarrassing misconduct in the NCAA's enforcement arm, the calls to start over are louder than ever.

Although the notion that big football schools might eventually break away from the NCAA is not new, the overwhelming sense within the industry is that some sort of major change is on the horizon. Whether that change includes the NCAA completely, in part or not at all is now talked about openly and frequently among administrators, according to conversations with more than two dozen high-ranking college athletics officials across a spectrum of Division I conferences.

The topic has reached such a boil in recent years, it was even broached directly to NCAA president Mark Emmert at an athletics directors convention in September 2011, when realignment had gripped the entire industry following the ACC's raid of the Big East for Syracuse and Pittsburgh.

According to a person in the room, whose version of events was confirmed by two others, one athletics director asked Emmert directly whether it was time for the top football conferences to split from the lower-tier conferences of the Football Bowl Subdivision, and perhaps even away from the NCAA altogether.

"I think he responded in a way that, it was a little political," said the person, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was supposed to be private. "It was more along the lines of, we're going through a lot of changes now and he had heard about those kind of backroom-type conversations, and he basically said it might be time to put everything out on the table and talk through all these issues that we see in the future. He didn't back away from it."

What form that evolution takes, and when it will happen, is a hot topic in the industry but also a murky one. Even if a group of schools or conferences decided to break away from the NCAA and form a completely new organization, there is no consensus on what schools and sports it would include, how it would operate and whether it would alleviate the fundamental problems in college athletics or become a parallel bureaucracy with a different acronym.

"I think we're still in a position to try to make this model we have work as best it can," Oklahoma athletics director Joe Castiglione said. "For every minute one thinks something like that would make life easier, they have to stop and take a breath and step back and look at how many other moving parts there are to that type of a decision. I can't begin to list all the issues that we would have to face in looking at something like that. It doesn't mean we wouldn't, it just means we'd have to be very mindful of what we're going to be up against."

Because of those issues, a breakaway from the NCAA would likely be a long way off, if it happened at all. But with the NCAA's governance structure at a functional nadir and its enforcement capabilities under fire, those casual conversations are happening more frequently and a picture begins to emerge of what a post-NCAA world might look like.

WHAT THE TOP 25 SHOULD LOOK LIKE NEXT SEASON

The most logical jumping-off point for any discussion of a post-NCAA world revolves around football because, in many ways, the NCAA already has minimal involvement in the sport at the highest level. Although the NCAA is responsible for making and enforcing the rules that govern football, it has nothing to do with the postseason or the revenue that the sport produces in the Football Bowl Subdivision. It only sanctions championships in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA), Division II and non-scholarship Division III, where budgets are much smaller than in the FBS.

The first historic blow to the NCAA's involvement in big-time football occurred in 1984 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schools and conferences could negotiate television contracts on their own in defiance of the NCAA's television plans. And perhaps the final verdict came last year when college presidents approved the transition from the Bowl Championship Series to a playoff, which is expected to announce a new name this week.

The new playoff structure includes seven total games -- four "contract bowls," two semifinals and a national championship game -- and will be run by an organization that essentially mimics the BCS. The playoff group, which doesn't have a name yet, already struck a 12-year, $5.64 billion deal with ESPN for television rights. The NCAA won't see a penny of that money.

The financial disparity between the 125 FBS football schools and the other 1,100-plus NCAA members, already huge, will only get larger. And at some point, meeting the needs of those divergent groups becomes difficult for the NCAA, which is essentially trying to write a rulebook that applies to everyone.

Most of the talk about a major shift in college sports has centered on the idea of creating a "super division," only for football, that would essentially operate under a different set of rules, and perhaps even outside of the NCAA altogether.

One athletics director at a non-football school, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said it would only make sense for BCS football programs to operate without the restrictions that apply to other schools who don't have the same budgets or goals.

"When you think about some of the schools that have gone through the major NCAA sanctions recently and the impact that has had on their reputations, they are great academic schools — Miami, Ohio State, USC," the athletics director said. "If I'm a president at that level, why would you want to put yourself at risk with that? You can run your business the way you want to run it and those guys can do the types of things they want to do, whether it's for stipends for players or recruit the way they want to recruit and not be publicly embarrassed as institutions. I'd be shocked if they didn't come to that realization."

Big questions to be resolved

But even that comes with a number of significant questions that are yet to be fully explored by college athletics power brokers.

• How many teams would be part of the super division? The 64 in power conferences, or would it also include some of the next tier in the Mountain West and former Big East or all the FBS -- which is getting larger with schools such as Appalachian State and Georgia Southern recently announcing a jump from FCS?

• Would there be a commissioner? What kind of enforcement model would be in place?

• What kind of Title IX implications would there be if football is run and funded separately?

• And another key point: Would the power conference schools have the stomach to just play each other?

Earlier this year, the Big Ten floated a proposal to stop scheduling FCS opponents, which has generally been a mutually beneficial relationship: The power conference school (and coach) gets an easy win, and the small-budget FCS school gets a high six-figure guarantee just for playing. Although there's no evidence other leagues are interested in moving in that direction, it would sever one last major tie between big-time football and the rest of the NCAA.

"I wouldn't characterize it as anything we're losing sleep over yet," said Southland Conference Commissioner Tom Burnett, whose conference competes in the FCS. "Could we exist without it? I'm sure we could, but it wouldn't be anything like what we do now. The guarantee money is important.

"When you come down to funding in the future, are they going to cut us out completely? I don't know. They have to play somebody. Are they just going to play each other, are they just going to play the Sun Belt and the MAC and Conference USA? If they do, if I'm in one of those conferences, I'm really going to drive guarantees up tremendously, because you're telling me I'm the only one you're going to play anymore. We're already seeing guarantees jump upwards of a million."

And if those schools do get cut out, what kind of congressional involvement or antitrust implications might come up? Castiglione pointed specifically to talk within the athletics community that a smaller group of schools "controlling the marketplace" might bring up even more legal challenges than they're already facing.

Jonathan Walker, president of Economics Incorporated consulting firm who has worked on antitrust issues involving a variety of sports leagues (but not the NCAA), said any antitrust claim against a new college football organization would have to prove that it was harmful to competition and consumers, not just the schools left behind. That would be difficult, Walker said, because there are a lot of alternatives to college football.

"There are lots of sports organizations that are exclusive and closed — not every football team gets to play in the NFL, the Pac-10 or even the San Juan Unified School District," Walker said. "There are many good reasons why being closed is good for fans and makes sports organizations more attractive to consumers.

"Whoever wanted to challenge the new college football venture would have to show why this new organization's exclusiveness and closed-ness was somehow anti-competitive rather than serving similar pro-consumer purposes as (do) all of the other exclusive and closed arrangements that are common to sports conferences and leagues."

But once past those issues, the notion of treating football separately – with its own governing body and enforcement model that would cater to the 64 or 80 top revenue-producing schools – is more appealing than ever within the college athletics community.

"It could happen, and it wouldn't be that complicated," said former Big Eight commissioner Chuck Neinas, who has consulted schools and leagues on issues ranging from realignment to television to coaching hires, and most recently helped keep the Big 12 together as interim commissioner.

"The college presidents would have to be comfortable that the structure would be meaningful and that they could have satisfactory enforcement. That there would be a governance structure undoubtedly controlled by the presidents and that they would develop rules that are logical and enforceable, and they would have the instrument there to make sure the rules are enforced."

Legal threat to NCAA on the horizon

Asked why his organization is still relevant today given its diminished role in football, Emmert said during a news conference at the men's Division I basketball championship Final Four this month that he disagreed with the premise. He said nothing had changed in the NCAA's relationship with college football since schools won the right to negotiate their own television contracts.

Despite Emmert's disagreement, it's practically a consensus among administrators at the ground level that some sort of structural change — whether subtle or major — will happen regarding football, because it's what the market will dictate. The budgets and issues that athletics departments deal with at that level are simply too different.

The question, according to an athletics director from a smaller conference that does not have an automatic BCS berth, isn't whether there will be change but whether it's amicable and cooperative.

"A lot of us would rather manage change than wake up and see something happen

to us, and that might be best for both sides if we could come to some sort of conversation," said the athletics director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. "I think the real big question is the scheduling model. If the scheduling model remains similar to the way it is today (where the small conference schools command guaranteed money to play road games at major conference schools), I think that's something that is palatable to this level that we could continue to make work very similar to the way it works today."

How that takes place could be determined in large part by the outcome of an antitrust lawsuit originally filed by former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon against the NCAA over the use of his name and likeness in marketing. There's a chance it could expand into a class-action lawsuit at a June court hearing, which, if the NCAA lost, could have far-reaching implications for the entire economic model of college sports.

It is considered the biggest legal threat the NCAA has faced.

"I just think these cases that are out there right now will tell us a lot about where our futures are going," Castiglione said. "I'm gonna say in 15 years I think we'll see a noticeably different structure. I'm not implyin

g that means we're not still operating under an NCAA umbrella. But we'll have had plenty of time to evaluate whether or not a new model, a completely new model, would serve our institutions better than the one we have right now."

If that happens, the next question is whether other sports — and particularly the men's Division I basketball tournament — would follow.

Currently, the $770 million annually brought in by the tournament's television rights provides nearly all of the NCAA's funding. The NCAA (a non-profit organization) says 60% of its media rights revenue is re-distributed to member schools, with the other 40% going to fund championships in non-revenue sports and other programs and services, as well as the national office's operating budget. That 40% includes some funding for schools in Division II and Division III, where the sports do not generate that level of revenue.

That fact brings out a host of critics, who wonder whether the schools responsible for generating that revenue will eventually want to stop sharing it — not just with Division II and III schools but with the so-called mid-majors, such as Wichita State, which earn NCAA "units" for their conference by playing and winning in the tournament over a rolling six-year span. Each unit is worth roughly $250,000. So Wichita State's Final Four run this season amounts to a windfall for the Missouri Valley Conference, which re-distributes that money equally to its members.

The fear among schools at that level, however, is that they would be excluded if the big-time football schools broke away and started their own basketball tournament. In much the same vein as school presidents approved a football playoff because the money was so overwhelming, a basketball tournament outside the NCAA is one of the last major money-grabs available.

An athletics director at a successful non-BCS basketball school, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the major concern at that level is whether CBS and Turner Sports, which carry the men's Division I basketball tournament, will decide they would rather just get the guaranteed ratings with North Carolina, Kentucky and Kansas than risk mid-major programs ending up in the Sweet 16.

"CBS has more or less already said, through the things you hear in this business, 'We don't care if there's 64 or 32 (teams in the tournament), the money is going to be the same,'" the athletics director said. "If the 'Big 5' (conferences) split away, when the next TV deal comes up, why are we (the non-BCS schools) going to be involved in it? It's the one place where the benefits spread to the whole. All the sudden, that's gone. So I can't afford to watch it split away."

Others, including Neinas, aren't sure there is much of an appetite for basketball to be part of any restructuring because the tournament's popularity is so culturally rooted in the diversity of schools participating and the annual story lines that emerge, such as Wichita State and Florida Gulf Coast this season.

Messing with that formula is risky, especially if a tournament is limited to just the FBS or a super-division of 64 or 80 schools, with nearly all of them participating -- not to mention how it would further devalue the regular season.

"I always felt the (current) tournament is absolutely the best model," said American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco, who helped negotiate the current NCAA tournament television deal when he was the vice president at CBS Sports in charge of college programming. "The tournament reflects the country. Everybody has a real opportunity, and the tournament has that unique ability to include every part of the country every year. There's a real charm for that. I think the Cinderellas are usually valuable to the tournament. I wouldn't change a thing."

Can we agree on anything?

Another idea that has been floated among administrators is a BCS-type organization that would run the basketball tournament and include many of the mid-major conferences, set up similar to the way it is now – only without the responsibility to share revenue with Division II and III schools.

There are dozens of other structural questions that would go along with a multi-sport breakaway, including whether a new organization would even want to be in charge of sports such as soccer, tennis and wrestling, which don't bring in much revenue.

Few in college athletics quibble with the job the NCAA does running championship tournaments for those sports. But if you take away football and basketball, what's left and where would the revenue come from to run it?

Several administrators say the current legislative model in the NCAA is already tilted toward the agenda of FBS schools and they question whether a completely new organization could be much different structurally from the NCAA, with the same issues merely reinventing themselves under a new name.

That's an especially relevant question if college presidents want to remain in control of college athletics.

After a period of high-profile scandals in the 1980s and early 1990s, the NCAA restructured in 1997 and gave presidents full authority to govern college athletics, with a diminished role for athletics directors and conference commissioners.

The result is often an NCAA that appears rudderless and chaotic, where presidents sign off on reforms that ultimately get thrown back at them by ground-level administrators.

The most recent example is the package of NCAA recruiting reforms in football, passed by the Division I Board of Directors in January after a year of presidential and working group debate, only to be picked apart by athletics directors claiming they had no input in the process. Now, those rules are back in a working group for significant alterations.

The result is that true reform in the NCAA becomes difficult, if not impossible. Emmert acknowledged this month the disconnect is wider than it should be between presidents and those who work day-to-day in college athletics.

"I think when we've moved toward a more presidentially-driven decision structure, that's a good one," Emmert said. "But we shoved athletic directors, coaches, to a certain extent, commissioners too far to the sides. ... How do we now look at our current governance structure for Division I and make sure we're getting good input, advice and counsel from the people that manage the athletic enterprise on a daily basis?

"I think we have had for some time now a lack of engagement of those folks in the process."

The biggest problem with any sort of plan about breaking away from the NCAA is that if college administrators can't even agree on simple recruiting rules changes like unlimited text messaging, how are they going to build an entirely new structure from the ground up?

One FBS power broker, who asked not to be identified because his discussions with administrators are confidential, said many of the NCAA's issues are rooted in a new crop of school presidents who simply don't have the same level of interest or knowledge as their predecessors when it comes to athletics.

"They don't know the issues or traditions or history, so consequently there's some problems," the FBS power broker said. "I told one president on the (NCAA Div. 1) Board of Directors the other day, if I were you guys I'd follow the 'Richard Nixon example' and claim victory and retreat. Just say, 'We've run it for 20 years, we've got it cleaned up, we've got it where we want it and we're going to turn it over to the commissioners and athletic directors, but we'll always be watching.'

"He said, 'Some of us have discussed that.' "

PHOTOS: COLLEGE FOOTBALL COACHING CHANGES