Playoff expansion, earning power for student-athletes, and now the move of Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12 to the SEC.
In an amateur sports world that has forever made its decisions and changes at a snail’s pace, college athletics is evolving at lightning speed this summer. And if these last two months and three seismic developments foreshadow the beginning of the end for the NCAA as we know it, that’s because they do.
In a damning and decisive 9-0 vote last month, the U.S. Supreme Court updated the definition of “amateurism” and pulled the curtain on the NCAA’s practice of making billions off of its athletes through a disproportionate barter of books, meals and board.
And with the NCAA’s member gates now open and its leaders left powerless to stop an eventual exodus, top schools such as Notre Dame must position themselves for a new world of college athletics, free of the NCAA’s greed and inconsistent leadership, but with many unknowns ahead.
“This is the end of the NCAA as we know it,” is how syndicated ESPN radio host Paul Finebaum summed up the massive changes coming to college sports and the NCAA’s place in them. “The funeral hasn’t happened yet, the last rites have not been uttered, but it’s over for the NCAA.”
For more than a century, the NCAA has held its member schools hostage while it made billions off of the student-athletes.
But with one single and unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court changed that course and the direction for all of college athletics, and the future of the NCAA as the guardian of amateur sports.
“The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student-athletes in innocuous labels, but the labels cannot disguise the reality,” surmised Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the old-guard tradition of the NCAA fleecing its players. “The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
Kavanaugh continued: “Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses’ income in order to create a ‘purer’ form of helping the sick,” in the same way other businesses cannot collude to slash employee wages to foster a spirit of “amateurism” in the workplace.
It only took 111 years, but finally the rug has been yanked on decades of sketchy NCAA business practices. And finally, its powerful member schools are realizing that the NCAA needs them more than they need the NCAA. NCAA President Mark Emmert has called for a decentralization of power, and his organization is conducting a study to determine a new governance structure.
Time will tell what other changes the NCAA’s limited scope ushers in, whether that’s more super-leagues or perhaps something more radical, like breaking ranks from NCAA oversight.
Now, exactly how Notre Dame football will ultimately fit into this quickly evolving landscape remains to be seen. Will the SEC’s super-league formation spark other conferences and universities to act — perhaps out of fear of behind left behind?
But as one of the most powerful and lucrative programs in the country, expect it to call its own shots — at least for now — and cling to its independence for as long as possible.
On the surface, the recent moves of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC appear to have little impact on Notre Dame or its independence.
At the moment, football independence is alive and well after Notre Dame director of athletics Jack Swarbrick adeptly negotiated a cozy space for the Irish when a 12-team playoff expansion is approved and implemented in the coming months and years. Notre Dame has too much cache in college athletes to have its hand forced.
But having Notre Dame someday bounced from the playoff party if super-conference officials call the shots and make only their league members eligible for tournament consideration could change how the Irish view independence in coming years.
Swarbrick, 67, has been a masterful negotiator since he took the Notre Dame job in 2008 when protecting Notre Dame’s place at the Power Five table and its independence. But with 13 years on the job — the second longest tenured ND AD behind Moose Krause (1949-81) — how much longer will Swarbrick stick around?
Many questions remain to what college athletics will look like in the not-so-distant future. But one thing is certain, those questions will soon be no longer answered by a profit-hoarding organization that forever used the term “amateurism” to hide its business practices.
Let’s all just hope the inevitable formations of super-leagues won’t someday cost Notre Dame its football independence and all the revenue, attention, appeal and recruiting advantages its autonomy brings.
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