Emmert: No tourney meddling

Mark Emmert acknowledges sentiment among some schools to explore a restructuring of the NCAA, but the association’s president is insistent: Nobody should, or likely would, mess with basketball and the Division I men’s tournament.

“The tournament is an iconic American event, one of the events the whole country looks forward to every year,” Emmert says. “And at least a piece of that is this wonderful David and Goliath story that pops up every year. It’s utterly unpredictable. That’s really highly desirable for the athletes, for the universities that participate and certainly for the fans.

“The issues around competitive fairness are predominantly concerns about football.”

He spoke to USA TODAY Sports amid a series of stops at tournament sites last week. A former president at LSU and Washington who moved into the NCAA’S top job in October 2010, Emmert also will be at the Final Four in New Orleans.

Sentiment for some kind of further subdivision of NCAA’S Division I appears to be growing — “there’s certainly a lot of discussion about that right now,” Emmert says — as its membership has swelled and financial and political divisions have widened. Indeed, it revolves around football.

The sport separated into what now are known as the bowl and championship subdivisions in 1978. Disparities in the 120-member bowl subdivision have grown increasingly pronounced since then.

Emmert is preparing to put together a working group that will look into Division I’s governance structure and the possibility of altering its rulesmaking framework — but probably not its competitive configuration. “By talking about how you make decisions, you sort of de facto deal with that,” Emmert says. “But I don’t think that working group, itself, will talk about it.”

There long has been hesitation to split off basketball’s richest, most competitive conferences and programs because of the popularity and commercial success of the basketball tournament, for which CBS and Turner Sports are paying $10.8 billion over 14 years to televise.

“It works,” Emmert says. “Norfolk State knocked off Missouri. If you need evidence of some level of competitive fairness, there it is. VCU goes into the First Four and makes it to the Final Four last year.”

O’brien’s pick:

Former Maryland player Danny O’brien committed to playing for Wisconsin, marking the second year in a row the Badgers have snapped up a high-profile quarterback looking to switch schools.

Coach Bret Bielema announced the addition, which fills a gap for the Badgers after the departure of Russell Wilson.