Mike Slive, the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, stopped short of threatening to succeed from the union at a press conference down in Destin, Florida following the SEC annual meetings. He stopped short, but not by much.
There is a lot of discontentment with the NCAA these days. Mark Emmert was a capable university president at LSU but he seems to be out of his depth as president of the NCAA, which is an organization founded for the protection of student athletes originally, but which now seems hell bent on simply protecting simply the status quo in American colligate athletics and/or their own collective behinds.
Central to the problems faced by major universities today is the issue of providing cost of attendance stipends to student athletes, something now strictly controlled by the NCAA offices. The universities want autonomy and they are determined to achieve that goal, one way or another.
When the president of the University of Florida, Bernie Machen made the bold statement to the press, “We would love to be part of the NCAA Division I, but we’re in a squeeze here”, he got a lot of people’s attention. Did he really say that there was a major move afoot to set up another division in American colligate sports, outside the jurisdiction of the NCAA? That’s sure what it sounded like.
Slive and Machen are hardly alone in their sentiments. Practically the entire power of the Power 5 conferences is behind them in their displeasure with the current administration of the NCAA. The Power 5 consists of the Big Ten, the Pac-12, the ACC, the Big 12 and the SEC. They include 65 member schools and those institutions rank among the most respected universities in the nation. Especially when it comes to sports.
What would a major split and a creation of Division IV do to the NCAA? Cut its revenues in half for a start, not to mention the major blow to credibility and respect that the NCAA would suffer. Power 5 presidents are calling the situation a ‘crisis’ and the NCAA had best listen to these powerful voices.
At present there are at least six major lawsuits pending that name Power 5 schools and conferences to task over the whole cost of attendance issue….and the NCAA continues to block any possible progress in the courts. No one desires to make a split from the NCAA. It wouldn’t be good for anything except to make a point. It would be a sad day indeed if such drastic action became necessary just to get Mark Emmert’s attention.
