Ross Bjork evaluates future of NCAA governance, role of power conferences

As college sports moves into the post-House settlement era, NCAA governance has been a key talking point for the future. The power conferences are gaining more control, and Ohio State athletics director Ross Bjork said that trend should continue.

Bjork evaluated where enforcement is heading and how the college athletics landscape got to its current state. He specifically pointed to the ability to adapt to technological advances, with regard to athletes’ ability to profit off their name, image and likeness.

Speaking on Next Up with Adam Breneman, Bjork walked through how the courts became such a key part of shaping college sports. Adapting, he said, would have helped change that.

“Look, I’m a big believer that we need national standards,” Bjork said. “We need a national governing body. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that piece of it, per se. The problem is the way we’ve been governed has led us into the courtroom, and we haven’t been very successful in the courtroom. Thus, we’re sitting here today. I think part of it, if you take a history lesson, we never really adapted to technology. Think about if we would have allowed people to monetize YouTube. Think about if we would have said, ‘Hey, Adam … [number] 81 is in this video game. He looks like you. He’s got blonde hair, he’s 6-foot-5. You know what? Here’s $1,000 to be in that game.’ ‘Hey, we’re gonna put your name, image and likeness on a poster with a Coke logo. Here’s $500.’

“We never adapted to modern technology and modern innovation the way we should have around name, image and likeness, which put us in the spot. So I do think the NCAA can govern academics, I think they can govern playing roles, I think they can run championships. I do think our conferences have to have much more of a voice, and we’ve already seen a lot of those changes. And then, because of the way enforcement has taken place around, basically, the financial arrangement between the institution and the athlete, we lost confidence in that model. Inducements, pay-for-play, we lost confidence.”

Ross Bjork: ‘We need to have a durable system’

Following approval of the House v. NCAA settlement, the College Sports Commission came to be. The power conferences help run the organization, tasked with enforcing key settlement terms. Former Major League Baseball executive Bryan Seeley serves as CEO.

Ross Bjork said by allowing the power conferences to control the CSC, it can provide “confidence” in the enforcement system. He added that can continue if federal legislation – such as the SCORE Act – goes through.

“We shifted that where the College Sports Commission is run by the conferences, and really, it’s the four autonomy conferences that have set it up, and then those programs that opt in,” Bjork said. “So we’re going to have this structure. But I think what you’ll see is, you’ll see more consolidation around, ‘Okay, these programs have more resources. They can govern themselves differently.’ And in are a lot of ways, there’s an acknowledgement that that’s already happened. There’s been a shift in NCAA governance, the voting structure in Division I has already shifted. So I think we’re getting to that place where the conferences can have more say. The College Sports Commission needs to get up and running. We need to have a durable system. We need to have sustainability within the system.

“So I think we’re on the right track, but we also need some federal legislation to codify a lot of these things. Without that, we could still be in the courtroom. We can still have state-by-state law that could all of a sudden supersede a federal court case. There’s still some steps to be taken, but I think we’re on the right track. I think we have a good roadmap. We just need to get there and we need to communicate when to get there. Those are the things that we’re working on right now.”