Transparency and Accountability: The Power 5's Secret Congressional Playbooks

To kick off DYK’s transparency podcast series, sports journalist Andy Wittry joins us to discuss the role of public records requests and investigative journalism in analyzing the college sports business model. Through public records requests, Andy obtained two sets of documents the Power 5 do not want the public to see. The first set of documents comes from December 2019, when the NCAA and Power 5 were formulating their strategy in Congress in response to California’s NIL law, SB 206. On December 10th, 2019, fifteen Power 5 leaders held a secret meeting, which was the blueprint for their engagement with Congress. It was a Power 5-only meeting that purposefully excluded NCAA President Mark Emmert. The Power 5 made clear that they were calling the shots but did not want the congressional campaign to be labeled as a Power 5 initiative. Andy obtained another set of documents dated December 13th, 2022, that describe the Power 5’s recalibrated congressional campaign after the 2022 midterm elections. The sports and mainstream media paid little attention to these crucial insights into who is really running college sports.

Power Five document: ‘We don’t think Mark [Emmert] or the NCAA should be taking the lead in Washington’ (November 10, 2020)

ACC memo: Power 5 reach consensus on what ACC calls ‘must haves’ with federal legislation (February 28, 2023)

0:00  Andy’s background

4:00  Value of public records requests

12:25 December 10th, 2019, secret Power 5 meeting

18:52 Importance of Understanding the timeline of vents

23:17 Participants in the 2019 secret meeting

26:03 Exclusion of NCAA President Mark Emmert from the meeting

27:36 Importance to Power 5 of congressional engagement not being branded a Power 5 initiative

29:30 Power 5 lobbying power independent of the NCAA and the NCAA as a “trade association”

36:30 December 13, 2023, ACC memo

41:26 Composition of Power 5 “working teams” on congressional engagement

46:27 Impact of 2022 midterm elections on Power 5 congressional strategy

49:15 Communicate “by phone, but not by text or email”

53:27 Lack of coverage by mainstream media

58:45 The future of college sports

Notes: This interview was conducted on March 14th, 2023. For an in-depth analysis of the December 10th, 2019, and December 13th, 2022 documents, see the Power 5 Secret Society Tab on the DYK homepage. For hyperlinked timestamps, please see the video on our YouTube channel.