What do Division I teams want to be?
Financial issues need resolution
As the NCAA moves toward landmark changes that will empower athletes more than ever, the next big debate within college sports is on the horizon: How to reform and restructure Division I?
A survey of college sports leaders, including university presidents, conference commissioners and athletic directors, was released earlier this week by the academic watchdog Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
“I think there is going to be a great deal of interest in ‘Where does my institution fit best in this environment?’” said Nancy Zimpher, former chancellor of the State University of New York and a member of the Knight Commission.
Zimpher said university presidents should be willing to ask hard questions about what kind of investments they want to make in football and basketball in the hope the revenue from those sports can fund others.
“I hope that campuses and conferences will open themselves to some new arrangements to solve some of these heavy financial challenges,” Zimpher said Zimpher.
The survey found strong support for reforming the way Division I is governed (74%) and restructuring D-I altogether (73%). NCAA Division
I is comprised of 351 schools that range from massive Power Five football schools such as Ohio State, Alabama and Texas to small private universities mostly focused on trying to access the lucrative NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Athletic budgets range from $4 million to more than $200 million, according to data collected by the Knight Commission.
There is far less consensus on what needs to be done to address the problem.
Among respondents at schools without football programs, 65% said they would likely favor separating the highest level of Division I football (FBS) from the NCAA and creating a new body to manage that sport. There are 130 FBS schools.
But 42% of respondents at FBS schools oppose that type of change.
Among Power Five respondents, 61% said they were very or somewhat likely to support the creation of a separate new division within the NCAA for the Power Five to compete in sports other than men’s and women’s basketball.
There was broad support for keeping March Madness as is. The men’s basketball tournament generates most of the NCAA’S revenue, which surpassed $1 billion in 2019.
But while those in Power Five would like for those wealthy conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC — to have even more autonomy, nearly 60% of respondents from the other 27 Division I leagues, including the other five in FBS, oppose creating a fourth NCAA Division.
Zimpher said the Knight Commission would like to take a role in creating that consensus by bringing together university presidents.
“We don’t have one body that really speaks for everybody,” she said. “In fact we may have multiple bodies, but we have to create consensus around the principles.”