Your inbox approves Men's coaches poll Women's coaches poll Play to win 25K!
COLLEGE
NCAA

NCAA to convene constitutional convention to propose dramatic changes to college athletics

The NCAA announced Friday it will convene a constitutional convention in November in an effort to dramatically alter the future of college athletics.

The organization has been confronted with a number of major changes just in this calendar year with approval of athletes being able to monetize their name, image and likeness, the proposal to increase the College Football Playoff to 12 teams and Oklahoma and Texas moving to the Southeastern Conference.

The redrafting convention will be led by a 22-person Constitution Review Committee, which will feature presidents, commissioners, athletics directors and students from Divisions I, II and III. The committee will explore proposals for a new system of governance and rules enforcement that examines the role of the NCAA's national oversight.

Action on the proposed changes is expected at the NCAA convention scheduled for January.

"I think it's really the shifting legal environment, the economic environment, the political environment — all of that — that creates this opportunity in a lot of ways to stop and erase the blackboard and draw a new chart again," NCAA President Mark Emmert said to USA TODAY Sports and a handful of other media outlets. "And that's a really, really powerful opportunity that can't be wasted.”

Emmert acknowledged the outcome of the convention could create rules that are different for the biggest and smallest schools within Division I, saying "the constitution and the structure of governing college sports need to be able to accommodate a very broad collection of institutions."

“Right now it includes the largest budgets in college sports, the smallest and everything in between," Emmert said. "And one of the questions in front of them is: Is that arrangement the most useful right now and can they change the governing structure to more effectively allow all of the schools to achieve the things that they and their students want to achieve?”

Emmert foreshadowed Friday's announcement two weeks ago when he proposed a smaller governance role for the NCAA in which the decision-making power on a large swath of issues gets delegated to conferences and schools, or even a re-imagined structure where certain sports are managed separately. 

NCAA President Mark Emmert spoke with a small group of student-athletes over Zoom on Tuesday.

“As the national landscape changes, college sports must also quickly adapt to become more responsive to the needs of college athletes and current member schools,” said Jack DeGioia, chair of the Board of Governors and president of Georgetown, in a statement announcing the convention. “This effort will position the NCAA to continue providing meaningful opportunities for current college athletes and those for generations to come.”

Members of the constitutional committee will be selected and start working on the issues in August. The virtual conventional in November will then provide feedback on proposals from the committee. Final proposals will be submitted to the NCAA Board of Governors by Dec. 15 and will be voted on at January's convention.

"It's going to be a lot of hard work for this committee and for everybody that's going to be involved," Emmert said. "It's a very short timeline to do this amount of work, but it's really essential that we do this and that it not be about trying to make tweaks or to make adjustments in the existing model — but to say, ‘If we're going to think about what college sports is today and can be in the future and what's going to best serve our college athletes’ needs and interest academically and athletically, what would we do and how do we do it?’

And we probably would not draw the map that we have today. We need to draw a new map. And that's what this body is going to do."

Follow colleges reporter Erick Smith on Twitter @ericksmith

Featured Weekly Ad