More on the NCAA FBS governance proposal.

I reached out to Doctor James Atwood, UB's Facility Athletics Representative (FAR) and one of the names listed on the FBS governance proposal which as been making the rounds. He assured me that the pdf is indeed authentic but that it is merely one of many such proposals which will get discussed next month and then again in January.

The NCAA is in the process of a governance review and is soliciting input from many sources. The document you have is one provided by the 1A FAR Board of Directors in response to the request for input. The NCAA Division 1 Board has scheduled a wide range of participation in an October meeting and then a full discussion involving all of Division 1 at the NCAA Annual Meeting in San Diego in January. It is premature to speculate on the results of all of these discussions. -Jim Atwood

So everything we look at with this document needs to be taken with a giant grain of salt.

As Dr Atwood says, this document will be run through a meat grinder of ego's, agendas, and balance sheets over the next few months. What comes out of the Presidential Advisory Group on October 29 is anyone's guess.

No responsible person would put weight behind it....

Fortunately no responsible person is running this site ;)

The recommended structure is as follows

1. FBS as a new and separate NCAA division.
2. A management counsel will have (at least) AD and one FAR from each FBS and maybe SWA's and Conference Commissioners will also be represented.
3. A FBS Division Board of Directors will have one president from each conference.
4. Hoops Tournament will stay the same, all of Division one can participate.
5. Fewer committee than the current DIV1 setup so that discussions won't be fenced in by a small scope of responsibility.

So how do we know that governance is the underlying issue behind all of this.

Well first is the FBS cabal's desire to make sure policy is adopted and problems are solved in an efficient and timely fashion. This is probably one of the reasons for not only the separation but also the smaller number of committee's each with a greater scope.

The goals and ethos of the colleges and universities in the FBS are all far more similar than those of schools in the FCS or non football entities. Putting the athletic budgets aside schools like Buffalo have far more in common with LSU than it does Morgan State.

The FBS must be the master of its own fate , particularly with regard to matters of enhancement of the student-athlete experience that depend on increased revenue allocation -- Brian D. Shannon Texas FAR

The idea of including not only AD's and Conference representatives but FAR's is to put someone who directly reports to a university president and who is changed with understanding the minutia of NCAA bylaws in a position of authority.

The FAR representatives make sure to stress their desire for a separate FBS division rather than a fourth Division I subdivision. This is the biggest impact item of the whole proposal. The frustration on the part of FBS schools is that before they can move on anything they have to get consensus that the item is in fact an FBS only issue otherwise the FCS and non football schools can throw their considerable weight around.

Despite wanting their own division, not subdivision, the FBS schools want to keep Basketball and non revenue championships unchanged. As an olive branch to the other schools this will leave more than 90% of the money currently funding the NCAA in place.

If you think this is only about football and money you are wrong. A nugget in the Appendix shows that this goes way deeper than full cost of attendance, or money distribution.

In the 2004-05 there were four proposals that would have increased the maximum number of scholarships for selected women’s sports. The changes would have bumped scholarships from 12 to 14 for gymnastics; from 13 to 14 for volleyball; from 18 to 20 for cross country/track and field, and from 12 to 14 for soccer.

That would have allowed each school to put seven more women on athletic scholarship and all were in the non revenue areas. At the time a majority of FBS conferences voted in support of scholarship increases for all four sports and the majority of FCS/NoFB conferences opposed. It was defeated later that year.

Is money a part of this move? Money funds schools, and Athletic departments so it can't be ignored. Chances are you go to your job every day for money and not for some higher calling. But the governance issues bringing this potential split up runs far deeper than TV, full cost of attendance, or bank accounts.