Michael Cross is no stranger to issues of NCAA governance.
Cross, the Southern Conference commissioner, has made stops at Penn State, Princeton and Michigan, along with a spell as the athletic director at Bradley. Such roles bring perspective on the unwieldy mission of college sports’ governing body.
“There has to be a willingness to debate and discuss what’s the right approach for the association going forward, knowing that we’ve got some really expensive lessons being learned right now, knowing that issues of representation will always be important,” Cross said. “The question and the word that I would put in here is, ‘How much freedom should schools and conferences have to make their own decisions, and how much of this should be centrally governed?’”
Following that train of thought, Cross released a nine-page position paper on May 15 outlining particular issues, clarifications and suggestions related to a proposal put forth by the NCAA’s decision-making working group that, among other measures, would tilt voting power at the national level toward the Power Four.
What the SoCon commissioner pitched in response to the NCAA working group’s request for feedback is a bifurcated governance structure providing freedom to conferences and schools to handle rules currently managed by the national office, while creating some level of insulation from persistent legal challenges.
“Every single rule that we create [at a national level], the first reflexive action from the coaches and administrators is, ‘How do I work around this rule?’” Cross said. “The easiest way to work around the rule is stop making rules.”
Cross, whose 10-school league crosses six states and includes Furman, Tennessee-Chattanooga, VMI and Western Carolina, boils his suggestions down to three themes: 1) Freedom for the conferences or schools to create rules previously attributed to the national office; 2) A narrow segment of regulation that is centrally governed; and 3) Aligning commensurate responsibility to those granted authority.
“Every single rule that we create [at a national level], the first reflexive action from the coaches and administrators is, ‘How do I work around this rule?’ The easiest way to work around the rule is stop making rules.”
— Michael Cross, Southern Conference commissioner
Those issues that should be centrally governed would be matters like revenue and championship access (Cross noted he’s “open to a discussion” around how revenue is distributed). Eligibility, financial aid and more could then be left up to the conferences and schools.
Take, for example, eligibility. Lawsuits have arisen nationwide related to restrictions on how many years an athlete can compete in college sports. Rulings have varied, but lawsuits continue to fight the longstanding rules around athletes being able to compete for four years.
Cross proposes schools and conferences regulate eligibility, not the NCAA — ultimately deflecting any potential challenges to those rules away from the central governing body.
“Villanova this year, I believe, is going to have a 32-year-old punter on its roster,” he said. “The quarterback from Louisville who was just drafted [Tyler Shough] was 26 or 27. You’ll have people who say, ‘Oh gosh, are we really going to have people who are these different ages competing against each other?’ We already do.
“I understand it intellectually, but we’ve got so many waivers and processes in place, and the pattern repeats itself over and over and over: We pass a rule. Rule doesn’t fit every set of circumstances. School submits waiver on behalf of student athlete. NCAA denies waiver. Public and media get inflamed and call NCAA ‘heartless administrators.’ Student athlete lawyers up, finds other student athletes who have similar circumstances and also lawyer up, and we’re back into this phase.”
“Under this [proposed] system do the Power Four conferences use their weighted voting to place their automatic qualifiers directly into the Sweet 16, while all the rest of us have to play in Dayton or something?”
— Dan Butterly, Big West commissioner
That the Power Four is seeking a more significant stranglehold on college athletics shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Big Ten and SEC have skewed the College Football Playoff voting structure such that they can functionally determine its path forward beginning in 2026.
The fear among smaller conference dignitaries is a world in which they might be frozen out of decision-making related to, say, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, among other topics, without a hand in such measures.
“Under this [proposed] system, do the Power Four conferences use their weighted voting to place their automatic qualifiers directly into the Sweet 16, while all the rest of us have to play in Dayton or something?” queried Big West Commissioner Dan Butterly, who released his own thoughts on the Power Four proposal earlier this month.
NCAA President Charlie Baker has notably been in favor of streamlining governance to better serve the vast needs of Division I schools, given the immensely different realities those departments face.
Baker, who spoke at a Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics event last week in Indianapolis, quipped the current NCAA structure makes his own past in complex sectors, like health care and state government, feel like a “one-person shop.”
“Generally speaking, the [P4], the scale and importance that they play in our ability to be successful, I do think they should have a bigger voice at the table,” he said. “But I think the other voices matter, too.
“Part of what we’re trying to figure out here is how to create a dynamic where if you’re at that table, your voice matters and you’re going to be accountable for the decisions that you make, because the ability of everybody to just hide in the crowd over history is really unhealthy.”
How the NCAA can actually thread that needle between the increased influence of the Power Four and the rest of Division I is a task for an all-time steady seamstress.
Cross’ model may not be perfect, but it’s a conversation starter. Whether that discussion is indulged, though, is another question altogether.
“We’re all together because we all compete really well together,” Cross said. “This is a great cultural phenomenon that we don’t have to abandon.”
