NCAA President Mark Emmert: Major change on the way

Mark Alesia | USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS — NCAA president Mark Emmert says he agrees with major-college football commissioners demanding substantial change in the Indianapolis-based association and has called a summit of Division I schools in January.

"I didn't take issue with any of the general statements that were made by the commissioners," Emmert said Thursday in an exclusive interview with the Indianapolis Star. "I thought they were helpful and good contributions to the debate."

The NCAA's leadership — the executive committee and the D-I Board — will meet Aug. 8 in Indianapolis and begin discussing models for a drastically different way to govern the 348 schools in the association's top division. Emmert said he expects significant changes to how the NCAA operates to be adopted within the next year.

At issue is the ability of the richest athletic programs — which attract the massive television rights fees — to set policy without the smaller D-I programs stopping them because of financial concerns.

"There's one thing that virtually everybody in Division I has in common right now, and that is they don't like the governance model," Emmert said. "Now, there's not agreement on what the new model should be. But there's very little support for continuing things in the governing process the way they are today."

Within the past week, Emmert sent a letter to all D-I presidents, athletic directors, commissioners, faculty athletic representatives and senior woman administrators asking them to save the dates of Jan. 16 and 17 for "an important milestone in which your participation is crucial." The meeting will be held at the same time as the NCAA's annual convention in San Diego.

In the letter, Emmert called the "first-time Division I Governance Dialogue" a "critical meeting" that will cover "virtually every aspect of how Division I operates."

"There's a need to recognize there are Division I schools with $5 million athletic budgets and $155 million athletic budgets, and trying to find a model that fits all of them is the enormous challenge right now," Emmert said.

An example was the failed initiative last year for athletic scholarships to include the "full cost of attendance," an additional $2,000 to $5,000 stipend per year. Scholarships are currently limited to tuition, books, room and board.

Although most of the large D-I schools supported the initiatives, the smaller D-I schools prevailed in defeating the plan in a structure where Indiana University's vote is equal to that of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Commissioners from the five power football leagues — ACC Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC and Pac-12 — all used their recent football media days to say they're tired of waiting for change. Emmert said he discussed the issue at length with the commissioners earlier this month in Colorado, so he wasn't surprised by their recent comments.

"We all have a sense that transformative change is going to have to happen," Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said earlier this week. "This is not a time when trimming around the edges is going to make very much difference."

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said Wednesday he wants lifetime scholarships for athletes to finish their educations and a non-athletic year for "at-risk" students followed by four years of eligibility.

"There's no one talking about this being some incremental change," Emmert said. "I think there's an interest in some pretty fundamental change in the way decisions are made, both to accommodate those (financial) differences but also to deal with concerns people have about representation ... in the policy debates."

Athletic directors, commissioners and faculty athletic representatives feel they've been marginalized in a policy-making system controlled by school presidents.

The power football conferences have a 12-year, $5.6-billion deal for television rights to the College Football Playoff starting with the 2015 season. Although the NCAA controls the men's basketball tournament, distributing the money to member schools, the major conferences keep their own football money.

That has helped fuel speculation about the big schools splitting from the NCAA entirely. But the power football commissioners made it clear they want a solution within the NCAA. Bowlsby described secession from the NCAA as "a last resort."

"There certainly hasn't been anyone pursuing (a split from the NCAA) seriously," Emmert said. "The interest that I hear from everyone, including those (major football) commissioners, is to try and find a way to meet the needs of all the membership inside the association."

None of the changes being discussed, Emmert said, would affect the NCAA basketball tournament.

"Everybody's very satisfied with where the tournament is right now," Emmert said. "It's something that's performing very well for all of our universities and our students, and it's obviously very popular in the country. ... That's one of the things everybody wants to persevere."

One structural change being discussed is a subdivision within Division I of the power football conferences. Delany said he can see a situation where schools would compete in the same NCAA championship, such as the Division I men's basketball tournament, "but provide a different package of benefits (for athletes) based on high resource vs. middle resource."

Said Emmert: "We don't know what either of those models would look like. But I certainly think it's a viable option for conversation."

The commissioners of the power leagues also talked about whether the NCAA is spread too thin. There are 140 committees, Emmert said.

"When you have that many committees, you have a lot of challenges to make it all fit," Emmert said. "We've added a lot of engagement and a lot of topics over the decades, and the fact that some people are asking whether we should be in all those businesses is a good, healthy question."

Mark Alesia also writes for the Indianapolis Star.