And you know that Sankey, Pettitit, and Yormack just might be thinking...."How can we pry some of that NCAA tournament money away from the NCAA ? "
"Big changes coming...you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows (apologies for an anthem of my generation).
A sitting Big Ten AD vocalized publicly what’s been privately whispered for months: Within five years — and most say much sooner — the Power Five conference schools will operate from under a new governance structure that features an athlete revenue-sharing model, a shift often described by many within the industry as “The Great Split.”
“I do believe five years from now that we will be at a point where we are sharing revenue with student-athletes,” Evans told leaders of the Knight Commission, a group of mostly former and current college athletic administrators promoting educational reforms in college sports.
“To think we are not going to be sharing some of those revenues… we are going to be there. It would not surprise me to see some sort of different type of governance structure in place that separates the A5 out from the current structure.”
Insiders say the case will require the industry to reshape itself. In fact, according to former Duke and Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White, such conversations are transpiring at the highest level of the industry, he told Knight Commission leaders at their meeting on Friday.
After the meeting, White spoke more to Yahoo Sports about the models, some of which would have the power conference schools “leave and take their resources with them,” he said. That’s something he believes will negatively impact college athletics’ broad-based, Olympic sport system.
But it is the House case that may drive the final wedge between the haves and have-nots of college sports. The Power Five shares CFP and NCAA tournament revenue with other schools.
A dividing line is forming between the schools and conferences that can and cannot afford to contribute to payments if the House case is settled or lost.
“If we are going to pay the freight for House,” Evans said, referencing the power leagues, “then why are we sharing the revenue to that extent?”
Evans is “hopeful” that whatever new model is created preserves competition among all Division I schools competing together in the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments — two of the most successful NCAA-operated events.
But he suggests that basketball could eventually go the way of football, whose postseason is controlled by the independent CFP.
In an interview that aired Sunday on "Meet The Press," Baker, in his ninth month as NCAA president, alluded to the creation of a new model for “50-70” programs that are “dramatically different than the rest.”
