As March Madness draws to its conclusion, we want to focus on the intersection of governance and a different type of athletic madness.
Take a quiz. To what extent is your institution’s governing board familiar with each of these elements?
- NIL (name, image and likeness)
- NIL collectives
- Private equity in athletics
- Buyout agreements
- Revenue sharing and disparities between teams, conferences and sources
- National Labor Relations Board–athlete organization and collective bargaining
- Conference realignment
- Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) litigation
- Title IX
- Transfer portal
- National Collegiate Athletic Association enforcement (negligible as it may be)
- Diversity of state laws regarding NIL and athlete income/taxes
- Gambling on college athletics
- Athlete eligibility appeals
Some topics should be familiar to most trustees. Some have garnered significant media attention (NIL); others are long-standing (Title IX). But some are new and others continue to morph and do so at breakneck speed.
Now take that quiz again, but this time for each item give the board a grade on its competencies in each topic. Now how well did it do?
We frame this quiz to highlight two issues. The first is the complex and fast-changing set of issues shaping collegiate athletics today, and the second is to illustrate that boards need more than familiarity with athletics—they need deeper knowledge and competencies in this area to govern effectively.
It’s a Real Business, Not an Auxiliary Enterprise
Over the past decade, Division I has seen dozens of conference membership moves (either additions or subtractions), including repeated multiteam shifts across the Sun Belt, Big 12, American Conference, Conference USA, Southeastern Conference, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference and others.
The NCAA’s TV and marketing revenue has risen by hundreds of millions of dollars, as has the price of media rights deals for the Big Ten and SEC Networks. Head coach pay in the Football Bowl Subdivision has climbed into a roughly $7 million-plus typical top-tier range; the University of Georgia’s head football coach, Kirby Smart, had a listed salary of more than $13.2 million for 2025. Other SEC, ACC and Big Ten coaches are not far behind. Indiana University’s head football coach, Curt Cignetti, who led his team to the College Football Playoff National championship this year, received not one but two raises over the past year (in addition to previously scheduled bonuses after the 2025 season) in a feverish attempt to keep him on campus.
Athlete compensation moved from zero when no NIL was allowed prior to 2021 to direct revenue sharing with athletes that can reach $20.5 million per university per year, starting in 2025. When it comes to athlete pay, University of Texas at Austin quarterback Arch Manning reportedly had a $6.8 million valuation going into the 2025–26 season. There are reports of a deal worth “around $7 million” connected to Brigham Young University’s AJ Dybantsa at the time of his commitment to the basketball program. While these are high-end outliers, the money is real across Division I.
Conference financial dynamics are also shifting. The ACC no longer shares postseason College Football Playoff revenues equally across all institutions. Instead, the University of Miami, by virtue of advancing to the title game, earned all the revenues attributed to the ACC institutions, leaving other member universities no CFP revenues. Other conferences are considering this winner-take-all format.
Beyond money, the power dynamic has shifted to conference leadership regarding the negotiation of new revenue deals. Boards are not included unless their president specifically invites them into the discussion. It was the Big Ten Conference leadership that negotiated the private equity agreement with the University of California Pension System before it was sunk by the boards at the Universities of Michigan and Southern California. When President Trump hosted a meeting on college athletics, very few trustees were invited, according to the publicly reported list.
Within the NCAA, the voting balance of power has shifted dramatically in Division I, as the Power 4 conferences now hold 65 percent of the weighted voting for major committees, leaving the remaining 30 Division I conferences with just 35 percent. Those colleges not in a top conference will likely be subjected to governance decisions in which their vote won’t count as much as before.
Outside the Division I and Power 4 conferences, other colleges are also facing similar issues including the lack of voting power within the NCAA, marketplaces that favor the top 50 to 60 institutions and eased transfer policies creating complexities in terms of transfer of credits and degree completion. At the same time, the continued wave of conference realignment is pushing colleges to reposition themselves in the face of growing financial risk. Boards must align athletic decisions with an institution’s mission in light of what the college sports landscape is today, not what it was 20 years ago.
In this new world order, athletics at some places is no longer an auxiliary unit supported exclusively by institutional funds, student fees, donations and media revenues. Outside financial partners, including private equity and stadium and arena hospitality providers, are meeting regularly with presidents, chief financial officers, conference commissioners and athletics directors—anyone who will take the meeting. These companies see a significant financial upside to entering the collegiate space. Unfortunately, there has been far less interest in partnering with non–Power 4 conferences.
Governing Athletics Today
Here are what many boards should be considering when it comes to their fiduciary roles regarding intercollegiate athletics.
- Commit to ongoing education. Boards should identify members who will commit to learn about the business of college sports. They should focus on what is happening both institutionally—finances, risk, student experience, facilities, human resources—and broadly: NCAA, private equity’s potential influence, gambling, television rights, etc. For example, members of Congress are beginning to question the nonprofit status of athletics. What do boards need to know about this movement and the potential implications, if not risks, it creates?
- Develop an appropriate governance structure for oversight. A decade ago, athletics subcommittees on boards were viewed by many as athletic booster subcommittees, with all of the implied responsibilities usually assigned to avid fans. For this reason, many dissolved. Given the complexities of the issues and their high-stakes nature, boards might reconsider creating business of athletics committees or subcommittees. The parallel might be committees that govern academic health enterprises. The alternative approach is to infuse athletics across a set of standing board committees—finance, audit and risk, student experience, facilities, legal issues—and then pull those committees together as needed for a comprehensive look at athletics.
- Ensure a board culture of critical inquiry. The best boards ask the best questions. Board culture shapes what questions are asked and which go unsaid, who speaks and about what, and the extent to which dialogue and dissent is encouraged (or not). Boards with healthy cultures ask probing questions, hold the administration accountable for progress and have feedback loops to ensure answers get back to the board in meaningful time frames.
- Expect the administration to provide a strategy and a plan. Institutions need a strategy that articulates the ways the athletic program will compete against other programs—and we are not talking about on the field of competition. What are the priorities of the athletic department, where will it invest incoming resources, what are the strategic choices it will make? Does it aim for broad participation or select championships? Does it focus on nonrevenue sports and forgo sizable investments needed to compete at the highest levels in football and basketball? Strategy choices involve, as Roger Martin writes, where-to-play decisions. These are choices about where to compete—an apt phrase for athletics. The board should also expect from the administration a plan on how to operationalize its strategy. What are the investments needed—people, students, coaches, facilities, infrastructure? What are the milestones and key performance indicators? How will the athletic department execute its strategy and over what time frame? How can these discussions be linked to your institution’s mission?
- Understand what peers and aspirants are doing and weigh the pros and cons of these approaches. Institutions like Clemson University, the University of Kentucky and Michigan State University are restructuring their athletics departments as LLCs (sometimes called “sidecars”). Like most new frameworks, there are pluses and minuses. Ask the administration for briefings to understand what others are doing and why, and their anticipated trade-offs. Look at these with a clear head and do not leap without looking carefully. Push back on efforts to speed up decisions that require immediate up-or-down votes, or that don’t allow trustees to fully vet the proposed deal or partnership.
- Monitor and manage risk. Boards are responsible for ensuring the university is taking the right precautions and managing risk. Boards need to provide constant oversight and be present (while not micromanaging), given the speed at which change is occurring. Engaging in a careful, ongoing risk analysis that includes both downside and upside risk is important governance work to do.
- Allow the administration to lead. The work of boards is governance, not management. This belief should permeate all board work but should be underscored when it comes to athletics. Boards must allow the administration to lead. Involvement in day-to-day or even weekly operations is not the board’s role. Ensure administrators are delivering, but don’t attempt to deliver for them.
- Be mission-minded/-reminded. It is easy to talk about athletics and the business of athletics in isolation. Boards need to keep mission in mind. Athletics, while said to be the tail that wags the dog, is still a part of the larger academic enterprise. It should be connected to the mission, such as by enhancing the student experience, building alumni communities, fostering community outreach and supporting marketing and branding. These are just a few ways athletics is embedded into the academic enterprise.
Conclusion: Is Supra-Governance Needed?
Boards govern a single institution or state system. However, the complexities of athletics today may generate governance questions that no single board can answer. Do we need supra-governance structures that bring together governing boards from multiple universities to make decisions?
Issues such as the role of private equity, the growing influence of conferences, gambling-related risks and antitrust legal challenges are all things that no single board can address. We don’t have solutions for what new supra-governance structures might look like, but it may be time to raise the question.
This is an entirely new world that can present serious financial implications for an institution. Decisions made today could reverberate over decades while foreclosing other options down the road. How will your board respond?
