I think the service academies with their specific demands create a bit of a unique situation within ncaa vs club. I spoke at length with Billy about that in Miami this year about the whole dynamics at play. There is a bunch of different approaches to the whole triathlon ecosystem, some triathlon programs have both the club/ncaa programs under 1 overall program (even if they practice separately) and then other programs the club/ncaa program are entirely separated and zero association with each other other than being at the same school.
I think the only good thing about the ncaa movement moving forward is that instead of a 400+ page rule book, the new rulebook will be I think 115 pages. There are so many ncaa guidelines/rules that you wouldn’t even think of that your like “why is that a rule”.
I have a granddaughter that is very good in volleyball. My input to her is forget the D1 NCAA programs, they will be gone. Education first, location second, and then just play club college volleyball and enjoy life
One note on the “delay” in the House settlement (original date of April 1 being finalized); the presiding judge, Judge Wilkin’s is retiring at the conclusion of this case. I think all parties are wanting to make sure the agreement is complete and every angle is covered so there is as little appeal as possible. Both parties submitted their updates middle of may, so all parties will have a month+ to go over all sides of the agreement.
Division 1 Schools will have until June 15th to declare whether to opt into the settlement or not (most schools/conferences have already declared their decision). Power conference schools have to auto opt in, all other schools can choose on individual basis, though many are tied to conference decision making.
What will be interesting is that several top triathlon programs are at schools that will not opt into the settlement guidelines. Most ncaa sports are pretty much dominated by the power conference members, so there’s no real worry on opt in vs opt out. In a sport like ncaa tri where it’s still not made championship status, that could be an interesting sub plot to follow.
I should note, the House settlement only deals with D1 athletic programs, Within ncaa tri it breaks down I think 17 D1 schools, 13 D2, 13 D3 programs.
Several appeals to the new ruling have been brought to the courts. Back pay to former athletes over the last 10 years will not be started, but current student athletes can begin to directly be paid on July 1.
Ok, so I’m assuming the hope from the NCAA drive was to grow participation in the sport and get colleges to fund women in triathlon through the “free” money pot that was created by mens basketball and football mingled with all the title IX proportional spending requirements.
The Supreme Court blasted that redistribution money pot to pieces when it said you can’t force athletes to work for free and make tons of money of them. So that money pot just got many millions smaller. But the courts are still saying you can’t spend all this money on the mens, correct?
So there’s still some money hopes that will flow through to support tri teams assuming NCAA fully pans out? Or is it all back into a several year wait-and-see holding pattern because no one really knows how it will turn out other than paying money to the big name athletes?
And surely, if there’s huge contracts going to top basketball and football college stars, then I assume soccer, baseball, gymnastics, etc. are also going to be doling out some degree of cash to buy talent as the arms race trickles out to other sports?
No that’s not the general take. For the most part, 95% of all this money is going toward football+m/w basketball on each campus. Sure some specific programs may go more in on iowa wrestling or LSU gymnastics, Stanford swimming or whatever but for the most part, non-revenue sports are going to likely be seeing a lot less.
Sport minimum competitions (ncaa tri is 4 races, 7 is maximum competition) are likely going to become the norm for most non-revenue sports moving forward. Obviously power schools will be less impacted, and mid majors will be a mix bag of schools opting into this and schools opting out. Several top ncaa tri programs are at schools that are going to opt out (essentially private school are more likely to opt out and traditional public state schools will opt in; private schools are more enrollment dependent while public schools are more eligible for state/federal funding and not essentially 100% enrollment focused).
The biggest sports that are likely to be affected are going to be baseball and softball programs. Baseball plays nearly 60 games a year, and their min is I believe 38 games. Every other weekend D1 teams pay for 20 hotel rooms over 3-4 nights, and they do that ~8 times a year. Softball generally plays 3 games over 2 days, so it’s slightly less expensive, but it’s still travel trips every other weekend for 3 months worth of expenses.
Challenge or appeal, it’s basically all the same, and it’s going to keep going against the ncaa. I actually don’t see how the current ncaa sticks around. But of course college athletics will never not be important on college campuses, they are essentially most schools’ biggest enrollment driver. So it’ll just pivot to some other organization run program. So saying NCAA is dead, is like ok, everything will just pivot. No chance colleges will suddenly stop supporting college athletics on their campus. It may change actual “support” (less scholarships) but they’ll always fund athletics on their campuses.
And of course the rumors of the power schools breaking off with football to form their own league is always there. Which maybe that will settle down the other sports to go back to regional based conferences. Again there is zero sense rutgers plays UCLA in any sport. Rutgers needs to be playing UMD, Uconn, penn state.
Maybe, maybe not. The point is if the ncaa goes bankrupt/non-existence/pivotedd away, behind this whole idea of “the ncaa is dead”, college athletics will just pivot to the next organization run entity IE ncaa 2.0 or whatever name they want to call it.
So yes to your point, there will always be a “governing body” for college run sports. It just may one day not be the “ncaa”.
The NCAA is the member schools. The money they generate through rights sales of events goes to the schools. If the NCAA is bankrupt, many of the top schools will be.
Yes and no. If the power schools suddenly broke off and went under their own governing body and direction, they’d simply have ncaa 2.0 as their governing body. IE what the NAIA does, what junior college does. The NCAA isn’t the only governing body in college athletics. Hell the “rumor” that many of the track coaches are saying is that there is potential for some of the national sport federations “overseeing” each individual sport. Schools are not bound to ncaa membership, it’'s volunteer membership. Now of course within the college setting it’s the most lucrative, thus why it’s the most membership out of all the governing bodies; which primarily for 4 year institutions it’s either ncaa or naia.
So my point was, saying the ncaa is dead is sorta a half truth. Universities are going to always support college athletics on their campuses, it’s too big of a role in enrollment to just cancel all athletic dept and/or support of athletic teams on your campus.
What is troubling with this settlement is that the power conferences now really have no incentive to add more ncaa sports on their campus (it’s just more mouths to feed with having to pay players). So unless you give a hella big amount of grant funding (see flag football likely being multi million dollar funds by the NFL) , your not going to add sports. There were several big programs that were very likely to pick up ncaa tri once it made championship status and not before. But now that’s basically all changed. Your seeing schools drop sports, your seeing D1 schools drop entirely to lower divison levels. There’s going to be casualties with this all for sure.
Uh, obviously. The point is the NCAA’s governance is fine. What has caused this whole thing is schools not wanting to be bound by rules when it suits them. They either want to be governed or they don’t. The rules of the NCAA are voted on by the membership. The members are also the ones making all the rules. It is 100% a representative democracy.
Where I would disagree is that in this time of so much uncertainity, and now going to be so much more have vs have nots, that saying anything is fine would be foolish. The ncaa as we currently know it would be done if the power conferences left and formed their own governing body/rules.
Or let me more accurately say. The “ncaa” likely will never go away cus there is both the D2 and D3 side of it. But that side of the sport makes the ncaa such little money that it all comes down, are the power conferences going to stay fully in it or are they not. I guess they could essentially branch off certain sports on their own and leave the rest of the non-revenue sports to be governed by the “ncaa”.
D1 schools are dropping sports and dropping divisions completely because of this settlement.
