A decade ago, delegates at the 1996 NCAA Convention in Dallas were preparing to give new meaning to the word “division” by considering a proposal to restructure the Association’s governance into three autonomous policy-making levels. Ironically, though, the vote to divide the way the NCAA governed itself perhaps did more to unify the organization than any other decision in the NCAA’s previous 90-year history.

To be sure, some NCAA leaders — particularly in Division I — had grown tired of the very town-hall-meeting style of Convention they were attending in 1996. Many considered it a cumbersome method of conducting business, and they were frustrated when the needs of the institutions with the most invested in the enterprise were undermined by others. It had been two decades since the Divisions I, II and III boundaries had first been drawn (an upgrade from the former University and College Divisions), and changes in athletics competition and media rights had only brightened those lines over time — so much so that a I-A breakaway was rumored if the decision-making process didn’t change.

Restructuring represented drastic change. A handful of I-A conference commissioners and presidents had concocted a plan to federate governance so that each division could carve its own legislative path under the umbrella of strong presidential leadership. True, future Conventions would not be the same — and some people knew they would lose their own slice of political clout — but 10 years later, even many of them might admit that the NCAA governance structure is better off. Unrest in Division I, while not absent, has at least abated, and Divisions II and III seemingly gained more control over issues unique to their agendas.

“While it has some weaknesses, it’s a better mousetrap,” Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany said of the new structure.

From a Division I perspective, many of Delany’s counterparts — even some who were part of a political majority in the old structure — would agree. One conference leader said in fact that the best outcome of restructuring was that it stopped the fighting: From separation, unity emerged.

That unity wasn’t readily apparent in the division 15 years ago. The “fighting” was over access to championships and the revenues they generated, representation at the decision-making tables, and whether presidential leadership — which had been advocated by internal and external constituents — was properly positioned. While there may have been a diversity of opinion about how to resolve those matters, the so-called “equity” conferences at the time were the only ones with a plan.

The flagship principle of that plan — at least the publicly stated one — was to give college and university presidents and chancellors the keys to the intercollegiate athletics car. In some ways, the NCAA already had put presidents in control — the establishment of the Presidents Commission in 1984 preceded a Knight Commission effort seeking the same outcome. But I-A didn’t feel the infrastructure allowed for the biggest bang from the presidential buck. Their solution: a board, not a paddle.

“Several leagues (the Big Ten, Pac-10 and SEC, for example) already had moved toward presidential leadership,” Delany said. “The Big Ten had incorporated presidents as its board in 1988. So the notion of CEO leadership had been around. That notion was right, that presidents should be in control. So how does a board work in the context of one institution/one vote? That’s a town meeting. That’s not how we ran our business at the conference level. You don’t empower presidents by putting a voting paddle in their hands — you empower presidents by creating a board.”

Whether it was presidents or commissioners who wanted the change may not have mattered. As one I-AA member put it, there wasn’t much difference between the two when it came to what I-A wanted. There wasn’t much pushback from I-AA and I-AAA about the need for presidential authority, either. Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Commissioner Rich Ensor said, “There was a general consensus that that was the direction we were headed in anyhow, so there wasn’t much controversy there.”

The result was a representative Board of Directors in Division I and Presidents Councils in Divisions II and III through which all policy funneled. That gave presidents the ability to develop and push agendas, and in Division I at least, a system to implement policy more quickly. Even in Divisions II and III, which retained the town-hall Convention format, the Presidents Councils through quarterly meetings were better positioned for a more efficient and dynamic leadership role.

The second stated need for restructuring was to streamline governance and expedite the legislative process. That continues to be a work in progress, especially in Division I. What began as four legislative cycles has filtered back to one, though the Board and Management Council can act on emergency or noncontroversial proposals at their quarterly meetings.

But the third — and most delicately stated — reason for restructuring was that the institutions generating the most resources for the Association weren’t getting enough in return. That was hard to say, though, without it sounding like a I-A takeover.

At the time, some didn’t care how it sounded. One commissioner said I-A conferences were footing the bill, “then being punched in the nose legislatively.”

Delany was more diplomatic. “Eighty percent of what was happening competitively at the elite level was coming from one-third of the members,” he said. “And the investment we were making was significantly different and larger, the pressure on equity and diversity was significantly larger — they don’t look at regional schools to determine whether campuses are achieving gender equity, they look at flagship universities. There was a disproportionate good news/bad news on those who had the greatest investment, yet the political weight inside the NCAA didn’t reflect that. We were but one-third of the town-hall meeting.”

Negotiation and compromise

Meanwhile, the I-AAs and I-AAAs were concerned about access to championships — particularly the men’s basketball tournament — and representation in decision making. While they didn’t have the lion’s share of the money, they at least had the legislative majority as protection. At the same time, though, they sensed that if the NCAA was going to move forward, Division I-A was going to have to have the control it wanted.

One I-AA commissioner called I-A’s desire for control “irreversible,” since it already had been manifested in the revenue-distribution formula discussions prompted by the $1 billion contract with CBS Sports in 1991. “Many of us thought that if we can get something meaningful out of restructuring, maybe it’s an opportunity instead of a detriment,” he said. In other words, it could get worse before it got better.

What the I-AAs and I-AAAs gained through restructuring was three-fold: (1) guaranteed access to the championships and funding of any play-ins; (2) a guarantee that the revenue-distribution formula wouldn’t be any more unbalanced than it currently was; and (3) adequate representation to governance.

What the I-AAs and I-AAAs lost was one-fold: Their majority in the old structure was vanquished in a representative governance that weighted voting toward I-A.

“Part of the cost of business was to structure governance to allow those programs that had the most invested in the enterprise to exercise a majority of control. That was a trade-off that we debated and eventually accepted,” said the MAAC’s Ensor.

“In some respects,” echoed Horizon League Commissioner Jon LeCrone, “the I-AAs and  I-AAAs saw that restructuring wasn’t the end of the world, especially if some guarantees could be made constitutionally, such as the AQs in men’s basketball. Without those guarantees, restructuring might not have passed.”

Did I-A presidents and commissioners get what they wanted out of restructuring? Delany said they got “far less than what they could’ve with a breakaway.” From his perspective, though, it was a political compromise that recognized the needs of both sides. There was a shift in the majority, but the new minority was made stronger than it could have been.

According to now-retired Kenneth “Buzz” Shaw, who as chancellor of Syracuse University co-chaired the Division I Task Force to Review the NCAA Membership Structure, nobody got what they wanted — which was the ideal outcome.

“Here’s what occurs when you get a group with similar but disparate interests at the table: You never get what you want,” Shaw said. “The essence of any kind of negotiation is that one, people leave the table feeling that they got the best situation they could get for themselves, and two, that you can go back to the table because you haven’t fractured your relationships.

“You don’t do that when you get everything you want and the other guy doesn’t get anything. So no one got completely what they wanted, but everyone left feeling what they came up with was something they could support, and that they could work with these people again if they needed to. They built a trust level among themselves.”

According to Ensor, that trust level has only strengthened. With the contentious matters of financial guarantees and access resolved, there was little left to contest. And whatever fears of  I-A “block voting” there might have been in 1996 haven’t materialized in the decade that followed. In fact, the upcoming override vote at the 2006 Convention is the first time Division I members have used that provision.

In addition, there’s little talk about Division I-A leaving the flock.

“Because of the guarantees that everyone receives in access to distribution and representation, we’ve settled into a period where you don’t hear much discussion about the dissolution of Division I,” Ensor said.

Horizon League Commissioner LeCrone said that in some respects — but not all — restructuring accomplished exactly what was intended.

“And that was to give more political power to those conferences that historically have invested more in their programs and felt that the decision-making process at the time was too cumbersome to allow them to move their agenda in a more politically expedient way,” he said. “I’m not saying that was good or bad, but that’s the way it was. Now was that a good reason to do it — to say this grouping of schools spends more than anyone else and has more invested in terms of human and financial resources, and therefore they should be able to drive the political agenda?”

Yes and no, said LeCrone. He said the positive is that in moving from a one-school/one-vote system to a representative form of governance, more people are involved in the Division I legislative process.

“You’ve got more FARs, more assistant and associate ADs, more SWAs, a larger percentage of diversity — so from that perspective, does that mean our governance is improved? I don’t know; it’s just different,” he said. “But more people, believe it or not, might have a voice.”

At the same time, LeCrone said, many members accustomed to the town-hall Convention feel disenfranchised in the representative model. “Why? Because one-school/one-vote forced a conversation on every campus among the president, the AD, the FAR and the SWA,” LeCrone said. “I’m not sure that all those conversations take place now. I think fewer people are having conversations about legislation now, but more people might be involved in the committees, if that makes any sense.”

Roy Kramer, a key architect of restructuring, said he’s not surprised people feel disenfranchised. He said, though, that that’s not a byproduct of the structure; rather, people are choosing to feel left out.

“There’s always some bad feelings when you go from a town-meeting structure to a federated process because people feel they lost that ability to hold up a paddle,” said the former commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. “They need to realize that they still have that vote, but it seems to be more difficult for people to feel a part of that, because they have to work at it. If you’re not active and don’t spend some time familiarizing yourself with the proposals, you can feel like you’re on the outside.

“Some of those people may feel like it was a I-A power move, but that wasn’t the intention at all. It’s just the difference between a town meeting and a federated structure.”

Delany said restructuring was a concept ripe for the times. Under the old system, he said, Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan had just as much political authority as Michigan; South Alabama had the same political strength as Alabama; Cal State Fullerton equaled UCLA. “While that may have worked in the 1950s and ’60s, it was not going to work going forward,” he said. “We needed to make some changes. Expectations had changed.”

LeCrone said those changed expectations continue to exist even in what seems to be a more harmonious Division I. He said restructuring hasn’t necessarily harmed or healed those divides — they’re more financially based than anything else.