Extinction of the NCAA?

What's Next wrote:

This hasn't been getting enough attention in my opinion, but if Football or Basketball are not played this year, the NCAA is going to struggle in a BIG way to exist beyond this fiscal year. We have already seen multiple schools cut programs with just missing out on revenues from this March Madness. What do you people think is going to happen when any of the following happen?

1. No football/ Football with no fans in the stands (no revenue)

2. No basketball/Basketball without fans

3. No student fees charged to regular student body

It is just really hard for me to see a scenario where the NCAA is able to survive a year and a half without sports. Am I missing something here?

long overdue...the NCAA is relic. It's becoming more and more awkward every year to pretend like a basketball player getting paid for their work is a crime while school build hundred million $$$ stadiums and pay coaches millions to coach 'amateur' sports.

the sooner the better

NCAA should only control non-revenue sports if anything....pretending like Cross country and College football are in anyway in the same realm is a farce.

The problem with this is, once the NCAA loses control over football and basketball, there will be no money to fund the non revenue sports. Without the money makers, there will be no college track or cross country...

Wouldn't the money be there again once this pandemic is over, after a year or two of having Football and Basketball played again?

The Coaches Develop the Players, so they can improve to the point of MAYBE They can play well enough to get paid after College, MOST of the players who did make it to the NFL would not have made it to the NFL without being on a College Team to Develop, Strength Coaches the Experience of playing against other Good Players every week, In High School a kid who Plays at Clemson, Ohio State Alabama, LSU etc. Was most likely a Man among Boys, So College is a MAJOR Upgrade. They could pay players if they want, but it would be like A Student Majoring in lets say a Accounting and wanting to be an Accountant After he gets his degree, The Teachers Teach what goes into and work on that in that program. Yes they could pay the kid for learning to be an Accountant, but he is not ready until after he gets A Degree or at least until they are well into the program.

I agree with this. The NCAA should be detached from universities. Making students pay astronomical prices for tuition in order to fund the football team is a terrible model for everyone (other than maybe the football team). Sports at the university level should be treated as minor leagues or development leagues, athletes should be paid, and attending school should not be a requirement. Olympic sports that are not money makers like track and field, volleyball, tennis, etc, should be subsidized by the federal government so that we maintain our Olympic dominance. Above all, universities should be about education, not sports.

Sports are a small expense to the university.

Lots of good points made in a lot of comments here. Yes, the NCAA is a relic. They spend millions on tournaments, staff salaries, etc for what is supposed to be an amateur sport. Let's face it. The NCAA is a professional sports organization for everyone except the actual athletes that compete in the sport. The sooner the NCAA is sent away the better. The football and basketball teams can find a way to become minor leagues for the NFL and NBA. All the other sports will revert to club status or just be eliminated. Let universities concentrate on education and less about the revenue making sports.

In 2007, I walked into an NCAA coaches meeting. The NCAA skiing championships were in New Hampshire and the XC races were held at Jackson Ski Touring. I had finished my skiing for the day and the coaches were meeting in the touring center on the eve of the competition. I heard all I needed to hear when the coach conducting the meeting stated the following:

"You as coaches do not wax the skis. The skiers must wax the skis themselves."

It was then that I realized everything the critics said about the NCAA was true.

There isn't enough money to fund programs for the next one or two years without fans. If the NCAA becomes extinct, it won't be the football and basketball players that feel the pain, it will be the athletes in Olympic sports that lose opportunities and will feel the pain the most.

What's Next wrote:

There isn't enough money to fund programs for the next one or two years without fans. If the NCAA becomes extinct, it won't be the football and basketball players that feel the pain, it will be the COACHES in Olympic sports that lose opportunities and will feel the pain the most.

^^^FTFY^^^

Not always true. Our university has a $50 million budget. Athletics is roughly $5-6 million of that. 10% is a huge expense.

What's Next wrote:

This hasn't been getting enough attention in my opinion, but if Football or Basketball are not played this year, the NCAA is going to struggle in a BIG way to exist beyond this fiscal year. We have already seen multiple schools cut programs with just missing out on revenues from this March Madness. What do you people think is going to happen when any of the following happen?

1. No football/ Football with no fans in the stands (no revenue)

2. No basketball/Basketball without fans

3. No student fees charged to regular student body

It is just really hard for me to see a scenario where the NCAA is able to survive a year and a half without sports. Am I missing something here?

Hope it happens. All the complaining about “not being paid” as a student athlete needs to go away. Schools need to go back to just being schools, not factories for professional sports.

No more NCAA?

YEAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Elite athletics disconnected from US universities?

YEAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

That would be a delicious silver lining to the COVID nightmare, the decoupling of expensive 'elite' (aka corrupt, semi-professional, bloated) athletics from what are supposed to be institutions of learning.

Why are some of you on a running website when you want to see the complete loss of opportunities for collegiate athletes? I don't get it.

A huge part of this problem is that the NCAA and universities have put so much power in the hands of student-athletes and people act as if it is the individual football player that people are paying to see. The reality is that if you took away players that are not interested in their education (no idea but maybe 40-50% of college football players) people would still pack the stadiums because it is the brand they are paying to see. The schools that are getting the best now would still get the best even if the top players went straight to a pro league. There is no reason to pay the players. The huge money goes toward their amazing facilities, coaches, etc..

Keep student-athletes as student-athletes.

What's Next wrote:

The problem with this is, once the NCAA loses control over football and basketball, there will be no money to fund the non revenue sports. Without the money makers, there will be no college track or cross country...

As a d2 runner, I can assure you my track program is not funded by the 200 people showing up to our footballl games every saturday morning, at $5 a ticket.

They can just be athletes. They can be club athletes. They can be developmental athletes, subsidized and underwritten by other organizations. A goodly portion of the ugly bloat that has wrecked our university system comes from the confluence of big money, athletics, corruption and greed, IMO.

The kid who is a supremely talented runner can join a club, hire coaches, etc. Think of the opportunities for coaches, for developers of athletic/track facilities, for other paradigms. In other sports, BB players can/should be developed by the NBA, FB players by the NFL, etc.

I presume you are a runner. Are you going to tell me that if your university offered no organized team function, you would have stopped running, or training, or given up?

I'm surprised to see so many people delighting in the idea of the NCAA ending. You do realize that would be a death blow to distance running in this country. Without the college system the way it is cross country and track will be done.

For all the flaws the NCAA might have it still develops and produces our future stars. I'm sure someone is going to point at the idea that we will do a club system like Europe or something along those lines. If that was such a good idea here we would have switched years ago but it isn't. We complain now about Footlocker vs NXN for who the true national champion is, can you imagine how diluted the competitions will become without a NCAA championship? Every AAU and JO group and new groups that would pop up would call themselves a national championship to try to make money. How many people are going to skip getting an education in college to go run for some club where they might win the 4th most prestigious national meet with the off chance of getting picked up for a sponsorship?

Actually there would be many benefits to the club system and whole lot less red tape. If you took time to study the way it is done in Japan and some of the European countries then you can build a good system from it. The USA has a huge population that isn't getting any smaller. Plenty of people like to run. Have you ever been to the US Club XC Champs in December???

If that was the only option for a kid coming out of high school then they would either A) train on their own B) join a club team or C) not continue. But either way the best would continue and the US would produce good national teams.

In most of the world you have the under 23 championships, under 20's (juniors), open (up to under 40) and master's. You could easily have xc championships, road race championships, ekiden championships, trail / mountain championships and indoor / outdoor championships. If done correctly then it could be very successful at developing runners. Why do we not have a half-marathon championship for university level runners (under 23's)?

The other thing it would do is force USATF to be accountable and overhaul the entire system. Right now they don't have to do anything because the teams pick themselves.

It could be done and be it could be done very well if that's the direction people had to go. As it is right now the NCAA doesn't really do anything for the sport. And there is a very false understanding of how funding works in college athletics. The mighty football and basketball machine doesn't pay for squat at over 90% of the schools (NAIA, NCAA II, NCAA III and most non-power 5 NCAA I schools). In fact they lose a lot of money in operations.

The events of the past five months have shown the weaknesses in the NCAA model across the board. Meanwhile track meets, road races, trail races and cross country meets are happening throughout the globe, yet the college teams in the NCAA are begging to have a season because the people who make those decisions only care about Power 5 football and basketball money. If the sport took care of itself with a club system then the show would just go on.

XC and track is such a small part of the NCAA that I have hard time wanting it to continue because my own personal favorite sports would be hurt. Thats a bit like voting for a presidential candidate that i hate and I think will be bad for the country, because they have promised to build a factory in my hometown.

When I see coaches making 10 mill. a year and criminal investigations being launched to make sure players aren't making anything at all..........I know the system has to go, no matter if it hurts my favorite sport.