With the Northwestern football team seeking unionization and the ongoing Ed O'Bannon lawsuit on their plate, the NCAA is ready to make major changes to Division I athletics as soon as August.
Proposed by a seven-member committee, ESPN reported the Board has been engaged in a continous dialogue about more autonomy for the "power conferences," or the NCAA's most wealthy athletic conferences. However, this is the first sign that an actual proposal is being prepared.
"We're not talking about full autonomy," Wake Forest president Nathan Hatch told ESPN. "We're talking about a range of issues."
Hatch, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors chair, said athletic directors of schools in the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC will have much more in rule changes and other "nuts and bolts." In the past, university presidents and chancellors have often made those decisions.
"There's been kind of a retreat of fundamental involvement by the athletic directors, who are the people on our campuses who make all of this work," Hatch said. "We've been engaged heavily with them in this process and they have been very responsive. To give them a more integral role in NCAA governance is critical."
The NCAA is going to be faced with inevitable change, whether they initiate it or not. O'Bannon is currently fighting the NCAA over a video game company that used his image, name and likeness without permission or compensation. EA Games and CLC have settled out of the suit, but the NCAA stands to lose amateurism in college sports should they lose in court.
"It definitely will [change]," Hatch said. "Membership can vote it down, but this has been a huge process. ... The board last fall had a whole day of hearings. We've talked to coaches, students, athletic directors, big schools, small schools, the Knight Commission, faculty-athletic representatives, and I think we can craft a compromise that makes the board more nimble, more strategic, in some ways more like a confederation that allows big schools certain ways to expend some of their new revenue on behalf of student-athletes."
The Northwestern football team also just began its quest to unionize college sports and is currently trying to prove that student-athletes should actually be considered as employees.
"There's a range of things that would not be under autonomy," said Hatch. "Trying to distinguish what is and what isn't is our current challenge. We hope the board can approve this by the summer."
Hatch said all the athletic directors who have been involved in these talks are interested in more autonomy.
"They welcome it... We're doing that very much in dialogue with them."
