When a close source says, “I would expect action on that [this week]”.
“That” being passage of a one-time transfer rule for college football and basketball. There appear to be two stumbling blocks to that. One is the Department of Justice.
While the legislation has long been expected to be in place for the 2021-22 season, its passage was delayed in December when the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to NCAA president Mark Emmert expressing strong concerns.
As of last week, a meeting between the NCAA and the Justice Department’s antitrust division still had not taken place. However, transfer legislation had been forwarded to the NCAA Council from the transfer working group.
… “The only reason why [one-time transfer legislation] hasn’t passed is this meeting with the Department of Justice,” said an administrative source close to the situation. “Whatever formal sit down they felt like they need to have didn’t happen as of last week.”
Gee, I wonder why Emmert doesn’t want to have a sit down with the feds.
As far as the source’s characterization of that being the only reason, well, there also seems to be something of a math question to overcome.
The NCAA Council is a 40-person body responsible for day-to-day NCAA legislative and policy decision-making. It has a representative from each of the 32 Division I conferences. Voting is weighted toward the 10 FBS conferences, and within that, the Power Five (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC).
If the FBS conferences vote as a group, they control 56.3% of the voting points. However, the Power Five cannot decide the issue on its own. Those conferences control only 37.5% of the total vote.
Eh, what do I know? It’s probably just a formality and those lower level schools have totally gotten over their fears of being raided at will by P5 programs. Totally.
The Group of 5 may be in FBS, but their interests on every important issue affecting college sports align more with the FCS football schools and the non-football D1 conferences. The Power 5 conference commissioners and athletic directors should be meeting to determine what it would take to break away from the NCAA and end this once and for all.
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And when I say break away, I mean completely sever ties in all sports.
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