Explosive Weekend Raises Doubts About Whether the NCAA Can (and Should) Survive
from Tony Barnhart by way of Twitter, and directly from Pat Forde, with Sports Illustrated.com/SI.com…..
Is the controversial collegiate system buckling beneath its own weight?
The NCAA has been vigorously criticized from the outside forever. It’s a fat, slow-moving target, easily harpooned by those who find college athletics to be poorly governed at best and immoral at worst. If you have no stake in the NCAA, you probably hate the NCAA.
But now the threats are internal, too. The calls are coming from inside the house.
From the players to the conference power brokers, people who are part of the NCAA structure are assaulting the controlling interests of college athletics like never before. On a dizzying weekend, three major stories broke that illustrate existential threats to the NCAA as we know it.
The Washington Post obtained leaked audio from a Southeastern Conference Zoom call last week that included football players voicing concerns about their own safety regarding playing amid COVID-19 in a discussion with league medical experts. Good for the SEC for having the Zoom call for the players; bad for the SEC for reacting poorly to it being leaked.
Then hundreds of Pac-12 football players announced a proposed boycott, delivered a list of demands to conference and university leadership, and voiced their unified determination to Sports Illustrated and other media outlets. In a summer of unprecedented player power, this is the biggest flex yet.
Also Saturday, SI reported that leaders from Power 5 conferences have initiated discussions about staging their own breakaway fall championships if the NCAA Board of Governors postpones or cancels them. While most of the conversation has been at the athletic director level thus far, at least one P5 commissioner is personally involved in weighing logistics of the concept. Sources told SI Sunday that a tentative plan calls for each P5 conference to host one fall championship: men’s and women’s soccer hosted by one league; men’s and women’s cross country by a second; volleyball by a third; field hockey by a fourth; and men’s water polo by a fifth.
For decades, people have theorized and even fantasized about the Power 5 (the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 12, the Big Ten, the Pacific-12 and the Southeastern) breaking off and leaving the rest of Division I behind. This is a sign of increased intent to consider a secession of sorts.
CLICK HERE to read more and do read all, from Pat Forde, with Sports Illustrated.com.www.si.com…..And a very good read, long and detailed, but again, very informative….