“Right now, sometimes we do recruit against those non-power five or non-high visibility conferences or whatever you want to call it, but we’re going to get to a point where we never recruit against them and the kid is either a power five guy or he’s not,” said a member of a major conference football program who requested anonymity.
“Based on the resources we have, based on offering the full cost of attendance, based on how much food we can give him and how much support we can give him and the difference in just the revenue and what the advantages are for a student-athlete being at a power five conference as opposed to a non-power five conference, once that separation happens the difference is going to be that big and that important to them.”
That’s the powder keg. There’s a belief or a concern, if not a downright exultation or fear, that the forthcoming NCAA reform will create and then encourage a larger gap between two distinct classes of Division I schools. The 65 high visibility schools have more resources and want to be allowed to do more with those resources so that they may better provide for their student-athletes. The rest of Division I — and for the purpose of this exercise, it’s really the FBS — is not as affluent and thus not as capable of doing as much to make things better or easier for student-athletes.
You don’t need a sherpa to know where that’s going, especially when you consider the high visibility programs are going to have a certain legislative authority.
So in the second part of our five-part series this week, I took a look at what separation will exist — that is, if you believe it will exist — and why. What will it look like? What will it mean? What can either side do about it? Clearly, there is a difference of opinion on this matter, and it’s a matter of both fact and belief. Marshall, for example, does not believe it’s getting hosed here. It’s interesting, though, to see and hear why — and I was surprised to hear that Marshall can do more than WVU in one critical area. But on the other side, you have a group that thinks this is a matter of responsibility and welfare, of sense and not cents, and that it’s merely a logical way to handle what already exists.
“I’ve never seen this as a financial matter,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “There are some things we want to do with student-athletes that have some financial implications, obviously. But the autonomy is about having some prerogatives in managing the organizations that we run and the institutions that we represent.
“Will it create a larger divide? I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but there’s a pretty substantial divide right now. Our Division I membership ranges from $3 million budgets to $170 million budgets. That’s a fairly large gulf already.
“We have apples, bananas and plums and kumquats and persimmons and grapes. We’ve got them all.”
