With all of the shuffling and rumored shuffling going on in the sports conferences in the country, one of the things I’ve heard is that if 4 mega-conferences are created, they could move forward without the NCAA oversight and do whatever they want.
I’m not sure how the NCAA as an organization works, so I’m wondering if any of you know. It would seem to me that if the NCAA as a governing and oversight body is tossed out on its ear, the sanctions to a school like USC would be a thing of the past. Which would make the college football and basketball programs uncontrollable and virtually semi-professional leagues.
What is the possibility of this happening? The 4 power conferences could set up their own playoff for a football championship, for example, and completely squeeze the NCAA out of the picture.
The big problem, I see it, is that even if you dismiss the NCAA from football, you would still rely on them to sanction all your other sports. If they decide, in their own NCAA-ey way, that your football program has violated their rules, they could use those sanctions to punish other programs as well (in the way that past death penalties have been levied based on transgressions committed by other teams at the same school).
For many years, the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) was the governing body when it came to all amateur athletics, including those in college. The NCAA was basically just a sanctioning body, they had no control over the colleges or the athletes. The athletes and colleges began to criticize the way the AAU ran things and by the late 70’s they were pushed out of college athletics and the NCAA took over.
Unless the NCAA makes some changes, the same thing could happen.