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Burwell: Revolt is brewing in NCAA
7 hours ago • By BRYAN BURWELL [email protected] 314-340-8185

College athletics’ most powerful man moves about the world with the appearance of a smiling, white-haired gentleman. But don’t be deceived by looks. SEC Commissioner Mike Slive might appear to be your kindly grandpa, but he behaves far more like a cunning field general whose best weapons are the clever deployment of his biting words and the unnerving potential of his strategic threats.

In his continuing battle with the NCAA Board of Directors — and, for that matter, the smaller conferences and lesser divisions in the NCAA — who continue to behave as if college athletics has not grown into a massive money-making machine, and refuse to protect their flank from mounting lawsuits and

common-sense solutions to the crisis, Slive is the leader of the Power 5-conference revolt that threatens to throw college sports into a major upheaval.

Last week at the SEC’s spring business meetings, Slive fired a loud and clear warning shot across the bow of the NCAA establishment when he said in no uncertain terms that if new legislation isn’t passed to free the Power 5 conferences to have autonomy on how they do business, the SEC, Big 10, Big 12, ACC and Pac 12 conferences will secede from the NCAA and create their own “Division IV.”

“It’s not something we want to do,” he said. “We want the ability to have autonomy in areas that has a nexus to the well-being of student athletes.”



Those issues that have been repeatedly raised by the 65 power schools —and consistently stonewalled by the rest of the pack — are legislation such as full cost of attendance, improved medical care and issues related to agents. “I am somewhat optimistic it will pass, but if it doesn’t, our league would certainly want to move to a Division IV,” Slive told reporters. “My colleagues, I can’t speak for anybody else, but I’d be surprised if they didn’t feel the same way.”

Those words were the strongest and potentially most devastating threat the NCAA has ever felt. On Sunday, as he showed up to a Mizzou alumni event at De Smet, the commissioner toned down the rhetoric, but it did not lessen the impact of what he’d already said and the frightening possibilities of what could lie ahead.

“I’ve said about all I’m going to say about that,” Slive told a handful of reporters who met him in the Spartans’ gymnasium for an impromptu news conference. “It’s now time for everyone to come together and meet. ... I’m very optimistic that we’ll make the adjustments that the steering committee has recommended to the board. ...We don’t have to worry about the ‘what ifs.’”

Oh, but yes we do.

The “what ifs” are so big, so bad, so earth-shatteringly significant to the entire landscape of college athletics.

If Slive and the Power 5 get what they want, we’ll move rapidly toward a new world in major college sports. It will be a world where the phony veil of amateurism at the major-college level will finally be yanked away. It will mean a lot of significant changes that could mean athletes at the biggest schools will begin to share a bigger split in the mind-numbing profits that conferences like the SEC enjoy.

The past two years, SEC schools were paid more than $20 million per school, and with the addition of the new SEC Network, that annual share will rise to a staggering $30 million per school. To those who wonder how schools will be able to fund those full cost of attendance stipends, better medical care and long-term health benefits after their eligibility expires, the Power 5 conferences say the money is there.

Slive maintains that the ultimate threat — the Power 5 conferences bolting from the NCAA basketball tournament — won’t happen. Unless ...

“But it would be an alternate to creating autonomy in certain areas,” he warned.

A little more than a year ago, Slive and I sat down for an interview, and when I brought up the subject of the Power 5 conferences seceding from the NCAA, Slive also said that was something that he could never imagine.

Now it’s something that is quite imaginable. The NCAA Board of Directors has a little more than two months to figure out what it wants to do. The recommendation of a steering committee has already put all the proposals on the table that outline the autonomy Slive and his cohorts are seeking.

So now we wait to see if the board thinks Slive’s bluffing.

Trust me on this one, I don’t think this is a guy who bluffs.

“If it doesn’t pass, the next move is to go to a Division IV,” Slive said last week. “It’s not something that we want to do. From day one, we said we want to stay in Division I, with the access to championships and a revenue distribution that won’t change. But within that structure, we want the ability to have autonomy.”

On Sunday in St. Louis, Slive was a bit more congenial. No threats. No promises. But the clock is ticking, and everyone in the NCAA knows it.

And what if the changes don’t happen?

“Call me in a few weeks,” he said. “Call me and we’ll talk.”

I don't put a lot of stock in anything written by Burwell. He's about the 5th best sportswriter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and rarely, if ever, generates anything worth writing home about.

Does anyone else find it ironic that the P5 schools threaten spinning off to do their own thing which basically is what we did and for which we received the death penalty?

So sick of the "b-u-l-l-s-h-I-t" let em split off. Good luck getting that extra/8th/$$$ home game. Probably will see a lot of 2 loss teams playing for the "so called" championship. Also, probably see a lot of their P5 bowl games disappear. . . Unless the bowls are so set in inviting 5-7/4-8 teams to their bowl games. . . We'll see how much a bowl game with 5-7/4-8 P5 team "moves the needle," as far as viewers go.

More than half of the P5 is composed of bottom feeders (Wake, Oregon State, TCU, Duke, Boston College, etc.) that are better suited to be in the G5. Only thing that really moves the needle in attendance/viewers/money for them is when their big dogs play them (OU, Bama, Oregon, Florida, Texas, Michigan etc.)

Big12Mustangs wrote:More than half of the P5 is composed of bottom feeders (Wake, Oregon State, TCU, Duke, Boston College, etc.) that are better suited to be in the G5. Only thing that really moves the needle in attendance/viewers/money for them is when their big dogs play them (OU, Bama, Oregon, Florida, Texas, Michigan etc.)

Bottom feeders? TCU won the Rose Bowl in 2011 and has made 8 straight bowl games. Duke has won 4 bball national championship and was runner-up 6 times since 1991, and in football made a high end bowl game this last year against A&M. Oregon St finished the 2012 football season ranked #20.
I wish we could bottom feed like those schools.

It might have been as far back as the 1960's. I have a distinct memory of an article in Sports Illustrated, perhaps by Zimmerman, about the idea of NCAA Div I football playoffs. IIRC it posited on winner from the then existing big conferences playing to one wimmer. Independents, as Notre Dame was then, could join a conference or be left out. There might have been some more or less arbitrary reassignment of conferences to reduce regular season travel distances. Altogether, it seemed a good approach to playing for a true national championship.

I remember also one letter from a leader in response. It stated we were headed for sixty team league of big schools playing "airplane" or "airline" schdules.

We have gone in a somewhat different way than suggested in the article. In part it is because of court decisions that are a factor in the extraordinary revenues now enjoyed by schools like UT and the SEC. But the self interest of the big schools in evident. They want a limited playoff AND as many bowl games as possible. The letter writer had some things exactly right. IMO the correspondent above who questioned the efficacy of bowl games featuring teams with a 5 - 7 records is right also. And the additions to P-5 conferences would be mostly new statre affiliated universities with political backing - UCF, USF, Houston, and some of those in California come to mind.

But maybe pay TV will take care of all that.

If the P-5 make their Division IV, I hope the remaining schools stop scheduling them in any sport. Let the biggies fund travel for all sports they continue. It is unlikely that Title IX will go away and we'll see how far the money goes.

If there were such a thing, a Division IV, I believe that the left outs in Division I would regroup to play to their own one winner championship and have their own TV patronage., like present day Divisions II and III. Scholarship limits and conferences would probably change. Probably there would still be a plethora of bowl games outside the championships series fo rthe differenrt divisons.

Finally, the potential changes so far as player compensation and health benefits, mentioned by mrydel above and Stallion and others in previous threads, look at least as challenging as P-5 greed, if that is the word to use.

Neither the NCAA nor its rules are the real the boogey-man in College Athletics-its always been the power conferences pulling the strings of the NCAA. Fans need to look through their hate of the NCAA and realize you won't like what you find when its gone. Basketball will be the next big shakeout

If they want to go form their own semi-pro leagues in every sport, let em

Remaining NCAA members should not be able to schedule them in any sport

LA_Mustang wrote:

Big12Mustangs wrote:More than half of the P5 is composed of bottom feeders (Wake, Oregon State, TCU, Duke, Boston College, etc.) that are better suited to be in the G5. Only thing that really moves the needle in attendance/viewers/money for them is when their big dogs play them (OU, Bama, Oregon, Florida, Texas, Michigan etc.)

Bottom feeders? TCU won the Rose Bowl in 2011 and has made 8 straight bowl games. Duke has won 4 bball national championship and was runner-up 6 times since 1991, and in football made a high end bowl game this last year against A&M. Oregon St finished the 2012 football season ranked #20.
I wish we could bottom feed like those schools.

Bottom feeders in terms of money and in terms of not being huge state schools with huge fan bases (OU, Bama, Oregon, Florida, Texas, Michigan) in other words the schools that can pack more than 90,000 in a football game being 2-10 ..

Judicial decisions will determine the future of these matters. Look for judicial decisions to support the concept of athlete unions and splitting up revenues. We have not even yet seen the tip of the iceberg.

Like water and oil, amateur, and UNION just don't mix

mrydel wrote:Does anyone else find it ironic that the P5 schools threaten spinning off to do their own thing which basically is what we did and for which we received the death penalty?

So true Safety in numbers.

PlanoStang wrote:Like water and oil, amateur, and UNION just don't mix

The future big question should and/or will be whether or not colleges are in the entertainment business and owners of pro sports "franchises" which is where things will end up. Despite recent legislation in Ohio specifically declaring that college athletes cannot be state employees, courts will over rule this legislation and colleges will be forced to decide what direction they take. The P5 appears to generally agree that they are willing to be pro sports owners and the rest of the NCAA FSB schools appear to not want to go that direction. Are colleges in the business of academics or will the entertainment business and $$$$$ totally change the concept of what will be the role and mission of a university???