Is the NCAA too Big?

Here’s a lengthy excerpt from an interview with Missouri AD Mike Alden published in the Columbia Daily Tribune:

Q: Should the NCAA take another look at its stance on amateurism?

A: I think it’s healthy to do that. I think if you step back and say, “No, we’re not going to touch that,” it’s a different age today. Now, you might not change anything. I have no idea. But should they step back and have the membership and others take a look at that and say, “Hey, do you really want to rethink this model?” Sure. It’s no different than when we relaxed all of those regulations on men’s basketball, allowing unlimited texting, and everybody thought, “Oh my gosh, this is a whole different thing.” Shoot, that’s worked out fine. It’s been good for the prospective student-athletes, it’s been good for the parents, it’s been good for the coaches, it hasn’t given anybody a competitive advantage, so I think that it’s really healthy to analyze your entire organization regularly, and I think amateurism would be an issue that you should look at and say, “Do we have the right model? Is there some tweaking, some adjustment we can make here.” …

It’s no different than asking, “Should we take a look at an additional division within Division I?” I happen to think that you should. I think that there are 60-70 schools that are different than everybody else in Division I. Different than anybody else and I think the time has probably come where we need to recognize that, that what goes on Michigan State is different than what they have to deal with at Eastern Michigan. It just is. What happens at Illinois is different than what they deal with at Illinois State. So let’s recognize it, let’s admit it, and let’s just say, “OK, let’s find the commonalities of those 60-70 schools and let them deal with some of the issues they need to deal with” while at the same time there are other common denominators that all of us have to deal with — whether it’s amateurism or whether it has to do with minimum hours toward graduation or standardized test scores, whatever that may be. All of us should have to deal with that. But I do think the time has come for us to look and to admit that there are 60 schools to 70 schools that are different than everybody else.

Q: That was going to be my next question was about the fourth division. Part of the problem at the core of this is that they in the last 20 years, made it so easy to move to Division I. Did you have a sense as that whole process was going on, that this was getting too big?

A: It’s funny you say that because 15 years ago I was the athletic director at Texas State, an FCS, I-AA football program. Their aspirations always were to be Division I — Division I-A. Now, I was there. I’m living this. Texas is right down the road. I’m living in a stadium of 95,000 people at that time. Now it’s over 100,000. I’m thinking, “It is so much different at Texas than it is at Texas State. Why should we even imagine that we should be Division I-A?” The answer generally that you’ll see is that we want to associate with I-A so we can look like them. We can get the afterglow effect, the ability to be able to be touched by it. So when you saw that happen and when you saw Louisiana-Monroe saying, “This is what we need to do,” when you saw Arkansas State saying, “This is what we need to do” and you saw UT-San Antonio. And again, that’s not to offend them. That’s just the reality of that.

Mr. Alden makes a point that I have felt for a long time: the NCAA, especially Division 1/FBS, is simply too big.  The economic differences (i.e. willingness to pay for tickets, to donate, etc.) between the fan bases of, say, the top tiers and lowest tiers makes the current NCAA structure an unstable equilibrium.  What will it look like in 15 years?  Only the shadow knows.