NCAA: ‘Nimble and quick’ changes coming to college basketball

Published 8:28 pm Thursday, March 29, 2018

Ever since a fall federal investigation and a subsequent winter bombshell report from Yahoo! Sports unveiled the corrupt underbelly of college basketball, talk of change has run rampant in the sport.

It came to a head Thursday when NCAA president Mark Emmert spent the majority of his annual state-of-the-union-like press conference before the Final Four in San Antonio, Texas, discussing and answering questions about amateurism.

“The most fundamental principle … is whether or not we want to have college sports as it exists today,” Emmert said Thursday. “That’s student-athletes playing student-athletes, or whether we want to move toward a model where these are employees that are compensated whether directly or indirectly for their performances.”

A committee was formed to help with possible changes. On April 25, a Commission on College Basketball, led by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will bring forth its recommendations to the NCAA Board of Governors and the Division I Board of Directors.

University of Minnesota president Eric Kaler, who serves as the chairman of the Division I Board of Directors, said the NCAA understands the severity of the challenges and has an urgency to act.

“Nimble and quick may describe some of our NCAA athletes on the court. It doesn’t often describe the organization,” Kaler said. “This will be different.”

But even before any potential changes are pitched, the NCAA already has an idea of what it doesn’t want to see happen.

“Universities and colleges have consistently said they don’t want to have student-athletes become employees of a university,” Emmert said. “They don’t want them to be playing for compensation. They want this to be part of a collegiate experience, and they want these young men and young women to be part of a higher education environment.”

Meanwhile, up the road from San Antonio in Austin, the University of Texas hosted an Intercollegiate Athletics Media Symposium with college administrators.

In a report by the Austin American-Statesman, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte said he’s against paying student-athletes, and Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said student-athletes already receive payments in the form of an education.

“I really don’t believe that college athletics is either professional or amateur,” Bowlsby said, via the Austin American-Statesman. “The co-curricular, higher education model only exists in the United States. It’s really its own model. … It isn’t professional, certainly, because the compensation is tied and tethered to the cost of education.”

A cut-and-dry desire to pay players may not be the most logical course, even for the most drastic opposers of the current amateurism rules. A more reasonable change may be allowing a student-athlete to profit off his or her name, image or likeness. This is commonly referred to as the Olympic model where athletes sign individual endorsement deals.

Emmert didn’t directly address the Olympic model. Instead, he focused on the need for more room for individuals who want to pursue pro careers.

The options, or choices, were relevant topics Thursday after Darius Bazley, an All-American recruit who committed to Syracuse, announced earlier in the day he will bypass college and play in the G-League, the NBA’s version of the minor leagues.

“If they want to go play professionally then great, good for them,” Emmert said. “If they want to come to us, play college ball and then play professionally terrific. If they want to do like 98 percent do, come to us, play college ball and then make a living like everybody else, that’s great, too.”

That’s another way of saying Emmert is in favor of doing away with the one-and-done rule, instituted in 2006 to require players to be one year removed from high school before entering the NBA Draft.

While there is no universal agreement on the matter, one thing everyone seems to agree on is the need for change.

Emmert said the NCAA was “dismayed” last fall when a federal investigation into the role agents and shoe companies play in collegiate sports led to the arrests of four Division I coaches. The findings led to the NCAA’s conclusion that it needed to restore the integrity.

Kansas coach Bill Self agreed something needs to be done with the current structure.

“The reality of it is it’s big, big business. It’s big money and everybody is looking to make something out of it,” Self said earlier this month.

“And you can make an honest case that the student-athletes obviously are the ones that create the money but really receive very little of it. So I think there will be an adjustment.”