How should the NCAA define D-I, FBS and FCS?
Under the present system, there are now 358 schools in D-I. IMO, that is far too many, and it is directly related to how the NCAA distributes revenues from the D-I national championship tournament. In effect, schools are encouraged to sign up for D-I even though they can never be competitive because the NCAA’s policy of giving every conference champion an autobid essentially gives them free money.
As for FBS, the NCAA tried to impose attendance requirements when it was formed, and very low ones at that, as a condition of membership. This would have relegated the MAC to FCS, but they resisted in court and were essentially grandfathered in. Now, schools can technically qualify, not by putting fannies in seats, but by allowing boosters to buy up enough tickets to inflate their true attendance.
IMO, schools should be allowed to select which division they compete in regardless of attendance, revenues, or past athletic success. But before allowing them to make that choice, I would make one admittedly major change.
Today, the NCAA only assesses schools token dues that don’t come close to matching the costs or benefits they receive by virtue of their membership. I would change that. I would assess members an equal share of the cost of NCAA management, which I would define as staff salaries and expenses, cost of investigating and managing compliance with NCAA regulations, and cost of conducting championship tournaments at every level.
In addition to that assessment, I would assess all D-I schools that sponsor scholarship football their proportional share of the cost of providing uniform officiating, including recruiting, training and scheduling crews for all D-I games.
I believe that these changes would (voluntarily) alleviate much of the bloat we now see in D-I membership, which has doubled since the NCAAT started expanding its basketball tournament field in the 1960’s. I estimate (NCAA financial statements aren’t very transparent) that the end result would be a D-I of no more than 250 members paying annual dues of at least $500 - 750K.
I’m not sure if that would reduce the number of FBS schools, since their Plan B would not be to drop to FCS, but rather to D-II. Possibly imposing greater numbers of sports sponsored at the D-I level might tip the scales on that.
Personally, I’m OK with having the higher resource schools (like the FBS) subsidize athletics at lower levels of competition. Let’s leave the D-I championships to the athletic programs that truly are high resource, and let’s allow each school to decide whether they are willing to be “high resource athletic programs” by subsidizing them out of general university funds and student fees.
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