Two Reasons There Will Always Be An NCAA
Dennis Dodd’s piece about the concentration of power quotes a number of people about the imminent fall, including this gem:
“I’d get rid of the NCAA,” said powerful attorney Alan Milstein, who once represented Maurice Clarett at the height of his scandal involving Ohio State. “I believe the NCAA is an anti-trust conspiracy. I think the schools can handle themselves.”
Two (of the many) pieces of evidence that argue otherwise:
First is the flood of complaints about the NCAA’s major deregulation of recruiting rules. Those complaints are not coming from understaffed nonrevenue sports or from have-not football programs that sense a tidal wave coming. It is coming from major football programs, who are fighting back against a set of rules that would seem to benefit them the most.
Second is the Pac–12 Handbook. We always hear about how if only the major football schools could get out of the big tent of Division I, most of the existing NCAA Manual would not be needed. But the Pac–12—one of the most like-minded and geographically close conferences left—has a 240-page conference rule book. That’s on top of the already 300 pages of NCAA rules (and that’s just what is printed).
There will always be an NCAA. It might not be called the NCAA, it might not be based in Indianapolis, it might not include the same set of schools, and it might not do many of the things the current NCAA does. But there will always be a national organization governing college athletics, it will have a big book of off-field rules, and it will be generally disliked.
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