Tomorrow could be the day college football changes forever

Submitted by Ron Utah on

It's likely that the five power conferences get "autonomy" in tomorrow's vote, forever changing the landscape of college football.  I hope and believe this will lead to improvements, but if the vote passes, as expected, the sport will never be the same.  I apologize in advance for all the Pelini comments, but I think he's on target here:

"This gives you a lot better chance of getting things done," Nebraska coach Bo Pelini said. "[What we have now] would be like if Microsoft had to operate under the same restrictions as the mom-and-pop store down the street. It's ridiculous, and it doesn't work."
"You have all these committees made up of people with different agendas that meet like twice a year," Pelini said. "It was broken before it ever got started."
"It's tough for an organization as large as ours to keep up with everything," Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz said. "My hopes are that maybe we can streamline some policies, re-evaulate some things and come up with a little more efficient way of operating."

LINK.

There are also several articles (quoting B1G coaches) on how recruiting might change.

1464

August 6th, 2014 at 5:21 PM ^

Power conferences could (read: will) soon have the power to set their own policies that other conferences or teams can also adopt.  This means the MAC cannot decide that ice cream at the training table shall have no more than one variety of sprinkle and have that applied unilaterally.  It allows power conferences to provide a more athlete friendly environment.

- Athletes will have representatives that can vote

- Teams or conferences can adopt power conference decisions, but are not required to

Basically, this is the NCAA trying to mitigate some of the screaming and yelling about not providing for the athletes.

LSAClassOf2000

August 6th, 2014 at 5:21 PM ^

Someone posted the NYT article on this vote this morning, but that one did not include much in the way of individual perspectives from the coaches themselves, so we can definitely keep this here for some supplemental discussion, I would think. 

The most interesting feature of the proposed autonomy legislation was discussed around here a while ago, in my opinion, and that was the notion of "permissible legislation" and "actionable legislation". Permissible legislation would be something - like full-cost scholarships - that the power conferences would vote on themselves and then the rest of the NCAA members could either adopt it or not, almost like an upper house / lower house, it sounds. Actionable legislation would be the sort that all conferences would still have a say in, but it was not clear how it would be be determined what proposal takes what path. 

grumbler

August 6th, 2014 at 7:14 PM ^

My understanding is that the power conferences would have autonomy in ten areas (like recruiting, time requirements, compensation, medical care, and the like) but not in any others (qualifications, transfers, rulebook, and so forth).  So, proposals take the path of the ten or the path of the rest.

MGoStrength

August 6th, 2014 at 8:17 PM ^

If I'm reading that correctly, are you saying that for example the B1G could say we want 4-year guranteed scholarships, full cost of attendence, and some sort of stipend, whereas the SEC could one-up and say we want to do the same, but also give a cut of TV dollars to athletes? I guess I'm basically asking if the conferences will be allowed to pay players if they decide that's what they want to do?  

 

The thing that worries me about this concept is that the B1G has traditionally been somewhat conservative in comparision to the SEC...maybe that's just my bias.  But, if the SEC decides they want to do significantly more compensation than the B1G is willing to do that could create big problems for UM.

xxxxNateDaGreat

August 6th, 2014 at 5:21 PM ^

This is a good thing. I'm tired of Southern Tennessee Tech or whomever holding back college football.

Side note: I really wish that No Pelini had possessed this current "IDGAF" attitude much earlier in his coaching career.

JCV16

August 6th, 2014 at 5:22 PM ^

I am going to try the one with the chocolate ice cream inside. But I will probably stick with the classic vanilla since there is chocolate on the outside and that is kind of the classic combo. 

GoBlueRandy

August 6th, 2014 at 5:26 PM ^

So, I'll admit I'm not remotely close to being up to date on all this stuff. One question I had was will this do anything to the NCAA Basketball Tourney? Would be an absolute shame if it does.

Zone Left

August 6th, 2014 at 5:26 PM ^

The changes are going to be smaller than you think. If anything, tomorrow is the day that doesn't change college football for the near future.

The goal of this autonomy proposal is to head off the various lawsuits out there. If they are allowed to go to court, the entire model could be torn about by a judge. Schools don't want that. They have far too much on the line in terms of not just salaries and alumni interest, but also in terms of huge capital projects financed by future TV revenue. If a judge takes a big chunk of that money, there will be some really ugly scandals when public schools raise tuition to pay for Taj Mahal weight rooms.

MGoRob

August 6th, 2014 at 5:31 PM ^

I'm not too up to date on what the repurcussions would be.  Do any policy changes have to be voted upon by all power conferences?  Or can say the SEC decide they want to pay players $10k, wherease the Big12 wants to only pay $3k?  This could get tricky with differences in recruiting tactics and I for one would hope that all power conferences would have to play by the same rules.

Tater

August 6th, 2014 at 5:53 PM ^

I commented in the other thread, but have one thing to add.  I have long been against a school like Eastern Washington being able to tell the University of Michigan how to spend and distribute money that they brought in.  Since there are more of those smaller schools than there are "big boys," the schools that bring in all of the money can't get anything done efficiently.

This is a great change.  If, by some chance, the vote doesn't pass, I look forward to the "big boys" forming their own association.