College sports administrators recognize growing gulf

Kelly Whiteside, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

NEW YORK -- Amid conference expansion and the growing gap between the top five major football playing conferences – the SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12, Big 12, ACC and Notre Dame – and everyone else, the question remains: Do the five power conferences need the NCAA? Would they better off taking their football and playing on their own?

Two university presidents said Wednesday they aren't in favor of a split from the NCAA. However, Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman added that a "serious conversation" needs to take to place about the gap. "You have to either fight it or accommodate it, but I think some accommodation needs to be made," Perlman said at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum.

Wake Forest president Nathan Hatch also doesn't believe five power conferences should leave NCAA. "We would have to set up a whole system," he said.

When asked what could be one of the biggest changes to come to college sports in the next five years, Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick cited an "another division, a Division 5" in the NCAA among the top football-playing schools.

"My only point is the tension grows as the business models get diverse," Swarbrick said. "It gets really hard to reconcile them over legislation and governance and the number of games played and all those things."

When asked what adjustments he would like to see in the current model, Swarbrick said, "You can't legislate competitive equity, and a lot of times we get ourselves in trouble when we try to do that. The Dallas Cowboys and the Indianapolis Colts have different resources but they manage to compete with each together. College basketball has proven that it could happen."

The NCAA has been examining its Division I governance structure amid sentiment to split its top football-playing schools. In the wake of the delay or defeat of several reforms backed by the Division I Board of Directors, including the defeat of a measure would allow up to a $2,000 stipend beyond the value of a full athletics scholarship early this year, tensions have increased. (Emmert said Wednesday he remains committed to the stipend proposal, which is being examined by a working group.)

Some kind of split of Division I has long been speculated as its portion of NCAA membership has ballooned to 338 schools and financial and political divisions have increased. Disparities among the 120-member bowl subdivision have grown increasingly pronounced. Individual schools' athletics revenues ranged from $3.8 million to nearly $144 million in 2010, according to the NCAA, prompting more schools to rely on student fees and other institutional subsidization to stay competitive.

However, a complete exit from the NCAA would be complicated.

"If BCS schools or any other schools decide they'd be better served by having their own association, then they can and should go do that," NCAA president Mark Emmert said. "You'd have to start your own enforcement arm, replicate all the championships and recreate all the arms of the NCAA but just do it in a way that serves your own purposes better."

Given the diversity of the group's membership, Emmert characterized the NCAA as "a very weird organization." He added, "We have 1,100 members. We have twice as many votes as Congress." (Not to mention a divisive fiscal cliff of their own.)

"We have to craft solutions that work across the members, when your budget is $5 million you look at (issues) differently when it's $155 million," he said. "We're trying to find rules that will work across all those disparate entities."

As college football moves to a four-team playoff in 2014, money is the focal point of the discussion. How that revenue will distributed could further divide the haves and have nots.

After Perlman said Wednesday morning that the playoff revenue distribution formula was finalized, North Carolina State athletics director Debbie Yow and Missouri athletics director Mike Alden both essentially said, "That's news to me."

"I haven't seen it," Yow said. "The distribution formula will be the single biggest thing to ever happen in college sports."

Perlman, who serves on the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, said conference commissioners will likely make the formula available when "we put dollars to it."

Bill Hancock, the executive director of the BCS, said the framework of the formula has been set but is not a finished project because "we don't know what the final revenues will be."

Determining how the pie will be sliced wasn't an easy process. "It was contentious," Perlman told USA TODAY Sports. "I'm sure they went through a lot of drafts and a lot of negotiations which you would expect. But in the end, they all arrived in a place where the presidents were comfortable. We all left the room singing Kum ba yah."

The most controversial part? "In the end how much do I get?" Perlman said. "There's a balance between access and money. The smaller conferences have to figure that out. What do they want? More teams playing or more revenue? That's the balance that was done and I think they were satisfied. … Every conference agreed to it and it wasn't with a gun to their head. This is a fair distribution."

Hancock said the next step of the playoff process will be determining the members of the selection committee, which will be worked out during the next three or four months. Then the site of the first playoff championship game, held on Jan. 12, 2015 will be determined. Hancock said it will likely be held at a current BCS bowl site.