Tuesday, June 12, 2012

We need a Commissioner of College Sports

One of the problems with big time college athletics is that every university and conference is looking out for its best interests.  Conference raiding is a direct product of conferences and universities looking to become stronger than others or to intentionally weaken others.  part of the reason that college football can't agree on a playoff model is that all of the power brokers are determined to design a playoff that will benefit their respective leagues.  Let's look at why the current BCS system failed:  the BCS was predicated on their being 6 power conferences and that parity would exist among them and that each season the teams in the title game could come out of any one of the leagues.  This delicate balance was upset--first by the Big 8 raiding the Southwest Conference and then by the ACC raiding the Big East (it could even be argued that the SEC stealing Arkansas from the SWC and picking up indy South Carolina was the first strike on the integrity of the BCS system even before we started calling it the BCS).  Fast forward to 2012 and things are even more skewed.

FBS or perhaps all of Division I needs to have a Commissioner of College Sports whose job it is is to look out for the best interest of college sports.  I am talking about someone with much more extensive powers than the current President of the NCAA.

Here are some of the powers I think the Commissioner of College Sports should have:

Designing models of post season play that are the most beneficial and competitively balanced

The ability to veto conference expansion if its deemed to be predatory and upsets the competitiveness of college athletics

The ability to mandate realignment if a conference has become too strong as a result of prior predatory raiding

Punish universities and players for violations, including increasing punishments that universities give their players if they are deemed to weak

Place mandates on scheduling--how many conference games a league plays, when teams can play OOC games (personally I think their ought to be a rule against SEC teams scheduling FCS schools in the next-to-last week of the season, heck, if I were the Commissioner of College Sports I would flat out ban games between power conferences and FCS schools)

Creating and implementing a revenue sharing plan

3 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed this article, however, it seems like the commissioner would get a whole lot of power. Do you think schools would ever go for it? I'm no college sports expert, but it seems like schools enjoy keeping their independence and having the freedom to do whatever they chose. Albeit I agree with you and I think a commissioner for college sports is a fantastic idea, as the position, if given the proper authority, would provide a better balance for college athletics.

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  2. The problem with college athletics is that the university presidents will never divest that much authority in an individual that they can't use as a pawn. They enjoy wielding the power they currently have and enjoy using their conference commissioners (Delany, Scott, and Slive) as predatory attack dogs whenever they feel the lesser schools are getting too upstart. College athletics will can continue to lack integrity and be marred with scandal because there isn't anyone out there who can truly police amateur athletics.

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  3. Honestly, the situation seems like a bit of a shame, as it appears college athletics would run more efficiently with a head council. Moreover, with no overarching authority the hope seems unfortunately distant.

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