Just sit back and imagine a world where you aren’t reading constantly about the evil organization that is the NCAA for a moment. Let it soak in…because we all know that is a foreign concept in a world where snark and constant cynicism permeates the Internet circles we all run in.
Now imagine if I told you that the evildoers at the NCAA are about to flip the script for real?
There’s no need to imagine anymore, because on Thursday the NCAA Board of Governors will meet and on the agenda is giving the “Big 5” conferences autonomy within the NCAA model.
Over the weekend, Dennis Dodd of CBSsports.com gave us insight in to the 82-page document that will be taken up by the Board of Directors at it’s meeting on Thursday. (If you want to get in to the weeds, click the link for all the intricate details — hint, it’s boring even for those of us who do this for a living)
Bottom line is this — issues like four-year scholarships, full cost of attendance, educational trusts, medical coverage and a host of other major issues are all about to be taken care of.
It’s a proposal that sounds eerily familiar to exactly what Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany was advocating for just this past July.
It also means major changes for all of Division I college athletics, as we know it — changes that could keep intercollegiate athletics alive and healthy for a very long time to come.
There are also changes that will make it less about the athletics and more about the student in student-athlete too. Much of the proposal deals with time limits and allowing athletes to pursue opportunities on the side.
Unfortunately, Dodd and many other writers across the Internet fell in to the trap of seeing this proposal only through the eyes of cynicism and irony. Neither of which should apply to this situation. See this example from the opening of Dodd’s article:
Restructuring, now, has become sort of a race to beat multiple lawsuits against the NCAA to court and also to defuse the unionization movement.
To use Dodd’s viewpoint of this as a “race,” one could say the NCAA is like the Tortoise and the majority of the internet like the Hare — one is slow to act yet ends up wining the race and the other quick out of the gate and looking foolish when it’s all said and done.
If the changes go through (and they should by all accounts), what will the Internet cynics and hipsters do? After all, what is an offseason without the obligatory bitch-fest about how awful the NCAA is and how it keeps players down?
No more painting the NCAA as Darth Vader — it just gave the big money-making conferences all the autonomy it needs to make the changes it wants to remain relevant. It now has less to do with rule making and more to do with acting as a trade organization (think Chamber of Commerce).
The truth is that most in the Internet community just didn’t have the patience to realize change would ultimately come. It just wouldn’t come fast enough for them because taking things slow isn’t in their nature.
A seismic shift like what is about to occur should never be a knee-jerk reaction. There are too many moving parts and getting it right is more important than doing it quickly.
Sure, it’s true that the NCAA has sped up the process a bit in the wake of PR hit, after PR hit and a potentially game-changing unionization movement.
Yet, even that’s a short-sighted view, one that fails to even acknowledge the behind the scenes work that has been going on for over a half-decade by the likes of Delany and a few other conference commissioners.
Just about every change the unionization supporters are looking for (short of “pay-for-play”) will be codified in the NCAA structure come August.
Past criticism of the NCAA has been more than warranted in certain situations, especially when it comes to its reaction to NCAA violations or its ridiculously onerous rulebook. That said, the changes about to take place address the biggest issues threatening to tear apart the organization and kill off a lot of the consistent offseason chatter about the horrible, no good NCAA.
If one thing is true about the fickle Internet world, they will find some new favorite things to bang on every offseason. Just like every other hipster movement, it’s time for the next cool thing to bitch about and here is my prediction: “Why do football or basketball players have to bother with pesky classes at all while in college?”
Simple solution…get on the bandwagon I’ve been proposing for over two years now, allow the NCAA model to be what it is and make the professional leagues put their multi-billion dollars on the table to create a professional system for cultivating players of their own.
Few are even asking the right question in all of this…Why is the NCAA the sole provider of talent to the NFL and NBA?
Notice who has sat silent in the corner during all of these debates — the three organizations that have actually figured out there’s a place for college and professional models to exist side-by-side…aka, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the National Hockey League.
They work in concert with the NCAA as a way of acknowledging not everyone is ready to be a professional athlete right out of high school or academies or junior leagues.
Even in the fast paced world of the early 21st century, the NCAA model still has a vital role to play in developing players and citizens. The reforms it takes up on Thursday will further cement its place in the sporting landscape for a long time to come.
It’s just too bad the Internet won’t be able to collectively freak out on the NCAA anymore, huh?
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