The NCAA will furlough and/or offer voluntary separation agreements to the majority of its staff this fall and winter. The only people not impacted by the furloughs and voluntary separations are the upper level executives of the NCAA who previously had been asked to take pay cuts. The NCAA is an organization that got its start because of the imminent demise of college football in 1905 because of unsafe practices in the sport and now is in turmoil as institutions have shut down sports and the NCAA’s primary revenue sources.
According to the NCAA website the NCAA was founded in 1906 and is a member led organization dedicated to the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes. During the 1905 season 18 college and amateur athletes died while playing football. The result was a public outcry so loud that President Theodore Roosevelt, a major supporter of the game, gathered 13 football representatives to the White House. These representatives met twice and during those sessions they developed safety measures and standards to allow play to continue. Shortly after these meetings, the NCAA was formed.
The NCAA has grown from those 13 representatives that met at the White House to provide safety guidelines for college sports into a multi-billion dollar venture today. However they are facing some unprecedented financial issues as they head into the 2020-21 academic year. The NCAA lost over $1 billion in revenue after canceling the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments last March. The question we ask after the NCAA furloughed over 500 employees this week due to financial issues created by the Covid-19 shutdowns is should the NCAA exist at all?
Today the NCAA is one of the most controversial tax-exempt organizations in the nation and has revenues well in excess of $1 billion. The NCAA has recently spent millions defending its amateurism rules in class action lawsuits. According to the NCAA website their primary duties are to interpret and support member legislation, run all championships and manage programs that benefit student-athletes. The primary reason the NCAA was formed in 1906 was to safeguard student-athlete health and wellness. They seemingly did this when they cancelled NCAA championship play for the fall at all levels.
University Presidents and their administrations can work with their own conferences to create championship events without NCAA oversight. Look no further than the Bowl Championship Series to see that championships can be run without the NCAA. The decision by the BCS to continue on with championship play this fall with just over half their membership participating demonstrates the inability of the NCAA to control health and safety and provide oversight if groups decide to hold their own championships.
Recent high profile infraction cases at major universities demonstrate the limited nature the NCAA has in enforcing its policies without subpoena power.Additionally, isn’t the programming the NCAA does for student-athletes what the schools say they do in their mission and value statements? Should this be the role and obligation of the member institutions to perform and not the NCAA?
The NCAA has produced great revenue but that has not translated into funding being dispersed to the institutions at every level of the NCAA. The vast majorities of institutions in the NCAA lose money on athletics and have to be subsidized by the university. Only a couple dozen actually made money from their college athletic programs in the last few years. Funding is not shared equally among all universities and divisions. As a result many have looked at alternative models over the past decade.
So what happens if we don’t have the NCAA? If the NCAA were to disappear it would not mean the end of college sports. It would just mean the end of sport as we know it today. And if the NCAA continues, expect major changes in the way it operates and the programs it offers. Either way, sport in America will never be the same at the collegiate level after the pandemic!
Oh Geez Sports 