How I'd Fix College Sports (D1)
We need to turn D1 sports into a tiered and regional system, give caps on athlete spending per sport (with heavy punishments on the institution for circumventing the cap), and provide opportunities for promotion/ relegation if universities choose not to spend as much.
That's the overall summary, but it's clearly a much more simplified version of how this would go.
1. The Tiered System - Each sport has three tiers for conferences (think of it as high-major, mid-major, and low-major) that become delineated because they determine the cap. The formalization of this system is new, not the notion of how we view these conferences -- but it forces all schools to be in one unified tier based on all their sports (with football membership being the exception)
2. The Cap - Based on the tier a school is in, we set their cap for spending in that sport. Basketball and football wil obviously have the highest caps (and I'm not going to pretend to have the answers to know exactly what the numbers should be for every sport). The key to the cap is that there are also spending floors required to put the roster together, and those are set at 75% of the next tier down's minimum.
So think of it like this:
^(High-Major: $12M cap, $3.75M minimum spend)
^(Mid-Major: $5M cap, $1.125M minimum spend)
^(Low-Major: $1.5M cap, no minimum spend)
The system this creates allows for universities to choose their own spending habits, and their conferences are built on the backs of aligning schools based on their spending habits.
- Regions - The Division III model of regions (and in basketball utilizing regional rankings) stands out as a potentially interesting idea that forces conference choice to be more about geography within tiers as opposed to pursuit of conference sweeteners or deals.
We end up with six regions: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southwest, and West
Regions help specify which conferences a team can join if they are looking to move up or down a tier. Each region has some balance (at least at the outset, which is all the NCAA can control) between tiers, and we end up with a system where the NCAA necessitates a minimum of non-conference games within your region. All of this helps cut down on travel costs, restore the fan experience, and could potentially streamline the process for "buy games".
- Conference Autonomy - Schools end up signing contracts with a conference, of which they are therefore a member. When contracts expire, they can move up or down into different tiers, or look to negotiate with other conferences within the same tier.
The major piece to this, though, is that conferences get a lot of say for membership rules. They can raise the spending minimums, punish members for infractions beyond NCAA, and determine how rev share of conference contracts is divided among members. Rev share -- division of conference-based tv contracts -- will be what makes these conferences attractive to members.
- NCAA-enforced punitive rules for exceeding cap - Very punitive measures. Suggestion would be a 10-year ban on postseason competition + lowering of spending on that sport to 75% of the cap.
Penalty for failing to hit minimum spending threshold is more delicate, but likely just a fine from the conference to pay that money back into rev sharing.
How it looks (for basketball)
Eight "High-Major" or Tier 1 Conferences:
- Big East (10 teams): UConn, BC, Syracuse, Providence, St. John's, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Villanova, Temple, Georgetown
- ACC (10): Duke, UNC, NC State, Wake, Maryland, West Virginia, Pitt, Virginia, Va Tech, Clemson
- SEC (10): Georgia, GA Tech, South Carolina, Louisville, Kentucky, Florida, Florida State, Miami, USF, UCF
- Big South (10): Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Miss State, Tennessee, Vandy, Memphis, Arkansas, LSU, Tulane
- Big Ten (12): Penn State, Michigan, Michigan St, Ohio St, Cincinnati, Xavier. Notre Dame, Indiana, Butler, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern
- American South (10): Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TCU, Houston, Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, SMU, North Texas
- Big North (12): Wisconsin, Marquette, Minnesota, Iowa, Iowa State, Missouri. Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, Creighton, Colorado, Colorado State.
- Pac-12 (12): BYU, Utah, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State. Stanford, Cal, USC, UCLA, Arizona, Arizona State
Six "Mid-Major" or Tier 2 Conferences:
Note: many of these conferences are built either based on football membership or by clustering non-football schools. Having a FBS football program mandates that a school stay in Tier 2 of other sports. A few programs (UMass, Army, Navy) will compete in Big East football to make that an eight-team football league, and Air Force + Hawaii would compete in Mountain West football
- Atlantic-10 (12 teams): UMass, Northeastern, Rhode Island, Fordham, LaSalle, St. Joseph's. St Bonnies, Duquesne, George Washington, VCU, Richmond, George Mason.
- Conference-USA (12): Delaware, James Madison, Liberty, Old Dominion, East Carolina, Coastal Carolina. App State, Charlotte, Marshall, Middle Tennessee, FAU, FIU.
- MAC (12): Buffalo, Ohio, Akron, Kent State, Bowling Green, Miami. Toledo, EMU, CMU, WMU, Ball State, Northern Illinois.
- Missouri Valley (12): Dayton, Belmont, Murray State, Loyola Chicago, DePaul, Bradley. Saint Louis, Illinois State, Northern Iowa, Wichita State, Drake, Oral Roberts.
- American (10): Western Kentucky, UAB, LA Tech, Southern Miss, UTEP, Rice, UTSA, Tulsa, Texas State, Sam Houston State
- Mountain West (12): Gonzaga, Boise State, Nevada, UNLV, Utah State, Wyoming. San Diego St, San Jose St, Fresno St, Sacramento State, New Mexico, New Mexico State.
A bunch of Tier 3 conferences house the rest of the teams. Not going to do a full breakdown here, and I would expect that many institutions would use this as an opportunity to reshape their athletic department & move to D2 or D3 (as has been common lately)