NCAA establishing Board of Governors to navigate anti-trust issues with Congress, employment status of athletes

The NCAA is establishing a Board of Governors to navigate anti-trust issues with Congress and dealing with the employment status of athletes, according to the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee’s final report.

It’s one of the more interesting parts of the final report, as Mit Winter — an NIL attorney at Kennyhertz Perry LLC — took to Twitter to explain, panning the NCAA for their strategy as it pertains to the antitrust law.

I just read through the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee’s final report.

It has some good proposals (medical coverage, scholarship protections, and degree completion funds).

But this is the most important part to me. pic.twitter.com/EpPzYid82Z

— Mit Winter (@WinterSportsLaw) January 3, 2023

“I just read through the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee’s final report. It has some good proposals (medical coverage, scholarship protections, and degree completion funds). But this is the most important part to me,” tweeted Winter. “It clearly shows the committee is not willing to think seriously about a new model that complies with antitrust law. Congress is not the only entity that can grant stability to college sports. College sports leaders could create that stability themselves.

“Relying on Congress to create a framework for college athletics makes no sense. Unless you’re still hoping for an antitrust exemption. This is the same strategy that was employed with NIL. It didn’t work.”

Another person who wasn’t thrilled with the NCAA after hearing the news was Jay Bilas, as he quote-tweeted the thread to make his feelings known on the situation.

“The NCAA remains unwilling to make the necessary changes to comply with federal antitrust law…the ‘plan’ is to beg Congress to allow a serial antitrust violator to continue to violate antitrust laws,” tweeted Bilas.

Meanwhile, March Madness could be one step closer to a new look, as one of the multiple recommendations the NCAA Transformation Committee made on Tuesday included potential expanding the tournament by 25%.

The committee made its recommendations Tuesday afternoon and it could lead to a 90-team tournament field — a significant increase from the current tournament — depending on multiple factors. According to the committee, expanding tournaments will be decided on a sport by sport basis. Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger noted an expanded NCAA Tournament is not a slam dunk, though. He said “many” in college basketball circles do not support the idea of increasing the field from 68 teams.

“To reiterate: Each sport’s oversight/governance group must support the recommendation and adopt the change to expand their championship tournament,” Dellenger tweeted. “Many in the basketball world are NOT in support of expansion. We’ll see.”

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips among those calling for expanded NCAA Tournament

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been among the leading voices calling for an expanded tournament field, citing Texas A&M’s exclusion from last year’s field as a reason why. He’s also a member of the transformation committee.

“What I’ve been through is a set on conversations at the national level, about being fearful through this NCAA transformation process that things would be taken away. My advocacy was, rather than worrying about taking things away, why don’t we take a step back and think about how we grow?” Sankey said in October. “The division’s grown over time. The number of members, the quality of basketball, the commitment that I’ve talked about here, the expectations that are upon any number of programs nationally. So, why don’t we facilitate those opportunities?

“It’s informed by the fact that I think [Texas] A&M was playing as well as anyone in men’s basketball last March and didn’t have access. Then you look at baseball, where Ole Miss is recognized as the last team in, and then is of such competitive quality that it wins a national championship. It opens your mind to say, are we leaving some of these teams in a bandwidth of maybe the top 50 out, from a net standpoint? That should be looked at differently.”

Phillips made his point at ACC Media Days, saying the idea of expanding the field was worth exploring.

“It’s time to look at that. It’s time to look at the expansion of all conference championships — not conference championships but National Championships,” Phillips said.

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this article.