II. Key Takeaways
1. The NCAA and Power 5 have refused to voluntarily change their regulatory and business models to reflect the realities of the 21st-century college sports marketplace. External regulatory pressures (e.g., federal courts, federal administrative agencies, state legislatures, and free markets) have forced the NCAA and Power 5 to change.
2. As money in big-time college sports has skyrocketed, the tension between the NCAA/Power 5’s claimed values and their business practices has become unsustainable.
3. The NCAA rulebook is specifically designed to control the athlete labor force—primarily in football and men’s basketball—through amateurism-based compensation limits and recruiting rules.
4. Amateurism is a labor principle, not a moral principle.
5. The NCAA’s claimed values (e.g., athlete health and safety, athlete well-being, athlete education, gender equity, competitive equity) are not protected through enforceable NCAA rules.
6. The Board of Regents case in 1984 (through which big-time football gained its financial freedom from the NCAA’s televised football monopoly) profoundly impacted NCAA regulation and governance. The NCAA became a front organization for big-time football interests. Under threats of leaving the NCAA entirely, big-time football has compelled the NCAA into doing its bidding.
7. The Power 5 have opportunistically used periods of scandal and uncertainty (e.g., the Autonomy movement in 2014 and the Constitutional makeover in 2022) to enhance their regulatory and governance authorities without accountability.
8. Contrary to its portrayals to the public and Congress, the NCAA is not governed by “democratic” principles of representative government. Neither the NCAA President nor NCAA governing Board members are elected. The NCAA President is hired by and reports only to the NCAA Board of Governors. The NCAA Board of Governors is self-perpetuating through a nomination process.
9. The NCAA bureaucracy’s complex web of governing boards, committees, subcommittees, and task forces masks a decision-making process dominated by a very small group of powerful insiders. Increasingly, those select decision-makers rely on the advice of lawyers, lobbyists, and public relations experts.
10. The NCAA procures the support (and votes) of lower-level D-I schools and Divisions II and III through March Madness distributions, including substantial block grants to Divisions II and III.
11. Athletes are not members of the NCAA and have no independent standing to demand a seat at decision-making tables or to directly challenge NCAA infractions and enforcement actions.
12. Athletes have been systematically excluded from meaningful input into NCAA policymaking and rulemaking. The NCAA recognizes only one athlete group—the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), which exists at the pleasure of the NCAA and is controlled by the NCAA. The NCAA has uniformly refused to recognize other athlete-driven groups.
13. The NCAA/Power 5 and their lobbyists have used SAAC in Congress to promote NCAA/Power 5 narratives. In using SAAC for lobbying purposes, the NCAA and Power 5 have suggested that SAAC represents all athlete viewpoints and there is absolute consensus among athletes.
14. Over the last 50 years, chronic governance tensions have existed between athletics administrators and university presidents/chancellors. The balance of power between these two sets of decision-makers has shifted back and forth and created uncertainty regarding who is actually in charge of the voluntary regulation of college sports.
15. The NCAA’s infractions and enforcement regime has been the subject of criticism and external scrutiny since the 1950s because of its lack of due process, selective enforcement, excessive punishments, and lack of transparency/accountability, yet it remains largely intact today.
16. The NCAA has used the infractions and enforcement process to enhance its public image in high-profile cases, going outside its authorities to assure the public it is protecting the “integrity” of college sports (e.g., Penn State Sandusky scandal and the SDNY basketball cases)
17. The NCAA’s infractions and enforcement process has adopted features of criminal prosecutions such as (1) “mitigating” and “aggravating” punishment factors very similar to federal sentencing guidelines, (2) use of confidential sources in its investigatory work (but not at hearings) and(3) grants of immunity from NCAA “prosecution” for cooperating witnesses.
18. The NCAA’s and Power 5’s quest for protective federal legislation is an admission that they cannot competently or fairly self-regulate.
