In a widely anticipated outcome, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors is expected today to approve additional autonomy measures for the Power 5 athletic conferences: ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC (update: The vote passed 16-2).  The new governance measures will enable these institutions to set more of their own rules and governance.  The spin during the lead up to the vote has been about including student athletes in decisions and providing better athlete benefits.  The Power 5 have touted better health benefits and covering the full cost of attendance.  These would be welcomed changes.  However, let me be clear.  This legislation is nothing more than a power grab by the Power 5.  It will only continue the damaging trend of escalating athletics expenses.

The changes will continue the recent NCAA trend of protecting the few dozen major athletic programs.  At the end of the day, the NCAA couldn’t risk the possibility of those universities leaving and taking much of the revenue with them.

The major conference commissioners, in particular, are very much driving the train.

In a recent essay for Inside Higher Ed, Boise State President Bob Kustra said of today’s vote, “If [the Power 5 schools] have the resources to outspend their Division I colleagues, then why not fix the NCAA rules to let them do so.”

He is exactly right.

These “reforms” are about providing more resources not for the players, but for competitive advantage.

As Kustra further notes, the entire Boise football budget in 2007 was less than University of Oklahoma Football Coach Bob Stoops salary.  Yes, the same year that Boise beat OU in the Fiesta Bowl.

While I am concerned about the naked commercialism that will ensue within the Power 5 conferences, I’m more worried about what happens among the other Division I schools.

If anyone has a chance at being able to afford the growing athletic leviathan, it is the athletics powerhouses of the power conferences.

What happens to the other Division I universities that want to be like the Power 5?

I work at Southern Methodist University which is a member of the American Athletics Conference (AAC).  The AAC formed after the old Big East conference split up as part of the conference realignment saga a couple of years ago.

The AAC is not a power conference although member UConn won the men’s and women’s basketball championships last year.

SMU, like most Division I institutions, is losing millions of dollars every year in athletics.

There are no plans for this to change.  The university will lose millions every year for the foreseeable future.

Yet, SMU wants to be considered in the same conversation as the other major universities that make up the Power 5 conferences.

This puts the university in a no-win scenario.  You either spend more (and have a greater deficit) in order to keep up with the Joneses or you stay the same (still lose millions) and fall further behind.

Some of my faculty colleagues would suggest there is a third route of dropping expenditures or even athletics entirely, but I don’t believe this is a realistic path forward.  The trustees, president, and alumni would never support such a course of action.  I think this is true at nearly every Division I institution.

I would suggest that most institutions will feel the pressure to increase expenditures despite the fact that they can’t afford what they spend now.

The result will be increasing costs for students and decreased resources for the rest of campus.  Talk about no-win scenarios.

And this is the real problem with today’s vote.  It will simply cause more problems than it fixes.  There may even be some that argue the vote will help the collegiate model of sports.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is no reason to believe that the Power 5 will do anything more with their newfound autonomy than grow their athletic budgets.  Sure, student athletes may get some small part of this money and that is a positive outcome.

However, the real winners are the conference commissioners, presidents, athletic directors, coaches, and boosters that want to spend more in the pursuit of victories.   That’s who really benefits from these reforms.

Some reform.  Seems like more of the same to me.