Following is the last of a three-part comment series from athletics administrators who spoke about the amount of power vested at the conference level during the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association Fall Forum November 16, 2001, in San Diego. The first installment from University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Faculty Athletics Representative David Goldfield appeared in the February 4 issue of The NCAA News. The second, from San Diego State University Athletics Director Rick Bay, appeared in the February 18 issue.

If a lot of power is vested at the conference level, then I must tell you I don't feel all that powerful. I work closely with 12 university presidents and chancellors. There also is a lot of involvement among faculty representatives, athletics directors, senior woman administrators and coaches in our system.

Some of you may have seen the headline in a recent USA Today sports section that read, "Big 12: Big time, big success, big bucks." The article primarily was about the growth of the conference over the past six years and our football success. While it wasn't exactly the perfect headline I'd like to see for our conference, I can tell you it is better than the alternative.

The Big 12 has achieved some significant competitive success, including four national championship teams a year ago. We are very competitive across a broad range of men's and women's sports. We also have achieved financial success with a record distribution to our members of more than $76 million last year. That success has been achieved without a significant number of high-profile academic scandals or rules violations, and I compliment our athletics directors and faculty representatives for their work on the integrity front. Our conference also has made a significant commitment to national service and involvement, and we have a number of people who serve on NCAA committees and in other national leadership roles.

We also have worked hard to raise the level of commitment to academic progress of student-athletes, and I was pleased that our faculty representatives pushed forward this past spring with a conference progress rule that is more stringent than NCAA standards. We have more work to do in this area. Our people also are working on student-athlete welfare issues, and we have a number of women's sports teams that have been added since the Big 12 was formed. Funding is up across the board for women's programs.

And yet, in an interesting sign of the times in intercollegiate sports, I feel somewhat compelled to apologize for our strength. It is clear to me that some conferences have become symbols of athletics commercial excess and a growing perception that a few control the direction of the enterprise. How did we get to this point?

Market-driven forces

I believe that conferences always have been important, but the developments of the past 15 to 20 years have indeed placed more focus on conferences and conference affiliation. The 1984 Supreme Court decision that ended the NCAA's control of college football television thrust conferences more directly into the television marketing role. It is clear that conferences today are the fundamental marketing units for college sports television.

The wave of conference expansions in the 1990s also increased the focus on conference affiliation. There also have been changes in the football postseason structure during this period. Conferences have played a more significant role in bowl negotiations and most bowls now have direct tie-ins with conferences. And of course we now have the Bowl Championship Series. Rick Bay referred to the role conferences play in this structure in his comment piece in the February 18 issue of The NCAA News.

There is no question that the nationalization of sports in the last 20 years also has contributed to the importance of conferences. We now have 24/7 sports coverage. National cable networks like ESPN and Fox Sports Net, newspapers like USA Today, and sports talk radio all have contributed to this phenomenon and they include a comparison of conferences and their relative strength as part of the regular fare.

The presidential reform efforts of the past decade have included a strong conference element. In fact, the recently released Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics report calls for "the conferences conducting the most visible and successful athletics programs" to lead future reform efforts.

It is true that the inability of institutions to act to address some of the most intractable problems facing intercollegiate sports also has led to the growing importance of conferences. Collective action in many cases provides political insulation. And it also is true that the diverse nature of the NCAA membership makes national collective action difficult to achieve.

But there is no question that the restructuring of NCAA governance has added the most significant amount to the perception of too much authority vested in conferences and conference offices. The movement away from the one-institution, one-vote model to a representative form of governance has reduced the voice of some members. The complexity of the current system also has led to frustration and there is no question that conference offices are doing most of the political work in this structure. Perhaps the current work of NCAA to review the governance structure may result in some changes that could be beneficial, like the return to a once-a-year legislative cycle except where emergency action is needed.

So is too much power vested in conferences? Ultimately that question only can be answered by the members of each conference. If a conference commissioner or staff fails to represent the collective interests of its members, then the answer is probably yes. And, perhaps most importantly, if the power that is vested in conferences proves to only be used to advance the commercial interests of intercollegiate sports, then the answer will be yes.

Kevin Weiberg is the commissioner of the Big 12 Conference.