Now that the college football season has ended and with a series of NCAA investigations ongoing, I thought it would be a good idea to decipher the decision-making structure of the NCAA. College football coaches have been very vocal about the NCAA and the decisions (or lack thereof) that the organization has made. Many of these comments and opinions have turned into rather hilarious memes on social media. Notwithstanding the hilarity and ridiculousness of it all, I thought it might help to know who the NCAA Board of Governors are and how decisions get made.
Some of the comments and opinions by coaches, bloggers, and talking heads will have you believe the NCAA is a shadow group of people that conspires to disrupt and enrage coaches. Despite public perception, the NCAA Board of Governors is comprised of university presidents, chancellors, and high-ranking officials from member institutions. By clicking here, you can see who the members are of the Board of Governors.
Within the Board of Governors, there exists an Executive Committee, which functions as a smaller, nimbler group responsible for addressing urgent matters and providing guidance between full board meetings. The Executive Committee often plays a pivotal role in decision-making during critical junctures, acting as a quick-response mechanism. Click here to see the current members of the Board of Governors Executive Committee.
Beneath the Board of Governors, various committees and councils contribute to decision-making within specific domains. These bodies focus on issues such as rules and regulations, championships, academic standards, and athlete well-being. The committees are often composed of athletics administrators, coaches, and other individuals with expertise in the relevant areas. Click here to see the NCAA committees and councils and the members that serve on them.
Regarding governance, it is important to realize that the NCAA does not exist in isolation but is only in existence because of its member institutions. That said, let’s make no mistake that the NCAA is grappling with significant challenges like Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and Alston coupled with continued legal action has altered the NCAA’s approach to college sports. I’ve spent a significant amount of time with former high ranking execs at the NCAA who note that many of these challenges are not a surprise but the NCAA (and its members) were slow to deal with these issues.
Now that we have entered the age of super conferences (combined with the transfer portal and NIL), it will be interesting to watch how the decision-making process of the NCAA operates. It’s also important for college coaches to know who they are talking about because it’s easy to criticize an organization for making an unpopular decision. It’s not easy to make those same critiques when a decision-maker of that organization is your boss.
My hope here is to simply shed some light on understanding who the decision-makers are at the NCAA. Please note that I’ve oversimplified this structure to make it more digestible to the readers. The committees and council structure gets in the weeds but at least this is a baseline understanding of the organizational structure of the NCAA.