Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive spoke for the big schools when he said, "What we're trying to give them is what [student-athletes] are asking for."
Slive visited the University of Massachusetts last week as the executive-in-residence for the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management. In a keynote address, Slive laid out seven goals for the new subdivision of Division I that will house the following conferences: SEC, Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12.
• providing the full cost of attendance to grant-in-aid recipients
• fulfilling the health, safety and nutrition needs of student-athletes
• allowing student-athletes who have exhausted their eligibility to complete their undergraduate degree without cost
• ending the cold war against agents and advisers so that players testing the professional waters can receive better information
• harnessing the demands of sports so that student-athletes get more balance in their lives -- i.e., another crack at the "20-hour rule"
• more and better assistance for academically at-risk student-athletes
• giving student-athletes a role and a vote in NCAA governance that affects them
That list could come just as easily from a union guy as from the commissioner of one of the most powerful leagues in intercollegiate athletics.
After the speech, Slive said, "I was careful to say that what I was interested in is what the student-athletes were interested in getting, not how they got it."
Slive, as do his colleagues, want to modify the collegiate model, not do away with it.
"I'm not in favor of them being employees," Slive said. "What does 'payment' mean? If payment means they are going to be employees, then I am not in favor of it. ... Whatever we do, at least from my perspective and the perspective of my colleagues, is to be done within the collegiate model. ... This is about higher education, so we need to do more within the context of higher education, not in the context of employment."
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