A future outside of the College Sports Commission? That may be what the Big Ten is dreaming of.
The Big Ten conference held its annual spring meeting this week and brought together conference leaders to consider a framework in which college sports’ richest and biggest conference governs itself.
According to CBS Sports, Big Ten leaders discussed self-governing revenue-sharing deals and setting rules based on legally defensible frameworks, rather than waiting for the NCAA or the federal government to create those rules.
"We cannot govern nationally right now," said Ohio State athletics director Ross Bjork. "There are too many extenuating forces. So, can we have a subset at our conference, but we're still going to play each other?"
Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti echoed Bjork’s sentiments, but roots his desire for self-governance in a lack of faith with the College Sports Commission.
"I would tie it to, can we see progress in the CSC?" he said Tuesday. "Can we make the change we think to adjust it? Can you protect that with help from Washington? That's one piece of it."
The conference leaders say the current NIL system of enforcement is “too restrictive” and believe that the CSC is falling short of what it set out to do, with only 45% of deals being reviewed within the touted 24 to 48 hours.
"We went down this path because we created this fraudulent market to be able to compensate our athletes," Washington athletic director Pat Chun said. "You agreed to these aspects of the settlement, which basically put a system in place to measure these fraudulent deals. And lo and behold, go figure out that this whole thing just doesn't work."
As more than 75% of third-party deals submitted to the CSC came from Big Ten and SEC student-athletes, another option on the table for leaders would be the ability to increase the revenue-sharing cap currently placed on large conferences.
"If it's percentage based off revenue, then drive more revenue," Bjork said. "And that can lift your percentage."
In the current environment, changing the revenue-sharing cap would require agreement among all five of the major conferences — unlikely. Big12 commissioner Brett Yormak said earlier this week that he opposes changes to the revenue-sharing structure without first trying to fix the CSC.
"Can we get to make adjustments that we think we need, based on the real-time experiences of what's happened?" Petitti said. "And what's sustainable about that? How does it impact what we're doing going forward? Because we're going to still face that with or without Washington. So we've got to be willing to come up with some sustainable model."
