NCAA proposes many changes to its operations | Blue Gold News

While these issues take up a great deal of oxygen and serve to detract from the actual games and competitions, they can’t be ignored. They are going to have far-reaching and long lasting effects on what college sports will look like in the future.

Many of these issues and actions are complex and have many different angles — we could probably devote an entire issue to discussing all of them. To avoid that, we’ll start with some of the simpler actions that administrative groups have taken recently.

Recently the Division I Council approved several actions, including the elimination of the voluntary coach designation in baseball, softball and hockey, and increased the number of countable coaches allowed in each sport to four.

That means West Virginia baseball will be able to add a paid coaching spot to serve under Randy Mazey, and alongside Steve Sabins and Mark Ginther.

WVU’s current volunteer assistant is Jacob Garcia, who joined the program in 2019, so it’s possible that he will fill that additional paid position.

In more of a procedural move, the Council also supported an increase of two coaching positions in both men’s and women’s basketball.

These coaches would be able to do everything the current four coaches per team are allowed to do, other than recruit off-campus.

Schools have had staff members filling these roles under a waiver that allowed them to participate in skill instruction, so this move will bring those staffers under the coaching umbrella.

The Council also eliminated a criterion that was long watched by recruiting aficionados — the use of standardized test scores as one of the requirements for immediate eligibility.

A generation of potential college athletes had to sweat out some of those test score bars, but now those will no longer exist.

The NCAA had temporarily waived those requirements in 2020 due to the effects of COVID on test scores and education in general, but they are now off the board permanently.

Only a degree, and a minimum number of core classes and an acceptable GPA, will be required to participate as a freshman.

It’s not hard to imagine, as the body continues to lessen requirements and give more and more to athletes, that in a few years there won’t be any national academic requirements at all for eligibility — only what each school or conference might deem appropriate.

Finally, and very frustratingly for a certain WVU athlete, the Council passed new guidelines for those players wanting to transfer a second — or third or fourth — time.

Those players must request a waiver for immediate eligibility, and must show either an injury or mental health condition that required a transfer, or special circumstances such as abuse or sexual assault that forced a transfer.

Of course, the Council also left itself a loophole, noting that “each waiver request will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis,” so again, it’s not hard to imagine that whoever hears a waiver request will be able to find a way to approve anything he or she wants.

This rule doesn’t go into effect until the 2023-24 season, but there’s no way to avoid the conclusion that the NCAA used this as the basis for denying WVU’s Jose Perez’ application, and appeal, for immediate eligibility this year after his transfer from Manhattan, which came after transfers from Marquette and Gardner-Webb.

On a more far reaching front, the NCAA’s Division I Transformation Committee released its final report, a 48-page document that listed a number of recommendations for changes and restructuring the organization, but not much is included that would be considered ground-breaking or anything close to what was hoped for when the group was formed.

That’s no surprise, as the Committee was headed by SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, who would be perfectly happy to keep things just as they are, with an ineffectual NCAA unable to control or regulate much in the world of college sports.

That would leave his conference, along with the Big 10, as the de facto powers with outsized influence in a landscape that has no regulation over NIL and diminishing power in many other areas.

Among the positive recommendations proposals are two years of medical coverage after college for injuries sustained there, degree completion fund availability for 10 years, and support services for mental health, academic, career, diversity inclusion and life skills services.

Of course, most of the latter have already been put in place by many schools, including WVU, so none of this qualifies as very transformative.

Undeniably, some of the recommendations are good, as they cover improved support for athletes in terms of physical and mental well being and better support for the championships the NCAA stages, but in terms of getting it to a position where it can make and enforce rules, there was nothing.

One proposal that did catch the eye was a recommendation to consider and study the inclusion of 25% of participating schools in a Division 1 championship event where more than 200 schools compete.

So, for example, in men’s basketball, where 363 teams are playing this year, the NCAA tournament would include at least 90 teams.

Many other sports, such as baseball, cross country, golf, tennis and track would also see big jumps in terms of postseason inclusion.

Past that, though, the meat of what the Transformation Committee was intended to address was left on the bone, especially in the area of enforcement and rules making.

While the final report indicates the desire to speed up the oversight and enforcement of rules infraction cases, there are no specific recommendations on how to do that.

For example, the report states the desire to “ensure the scope of the enforcement staff’s investigation (to prioritize) timeliness,” but has no recommended rules to be made or exactly how that will occur.

Instead, it recommends that the Division I Oversight Council establish subcommittees to study and create a new system to monitor and regulate rules in new areas. Wasn’t that what the Transformation Committee was supposed to do?

Behind the scenes, the NCAA clearly wants the federal government to create legislation and rules that cover some of these areas, especially NIL. Congress, of course, wants no part of that, as it’s a no-win situation that will anger a significant percentage of its constituency one way or the other.

State level NIL rules aren’t being enforced and are largely ignored, and without a huge investigative body, it would figure that any nation-wide laws would fall into the same category.

Thus, while the NCAA and the Transformation Committee are blowing their own horns with many of their recommendations, in the area of rules breaking, investigations and enforcement, nothing has changed.