If their day jobs weren't enough, Ohio Athletics Director Julie Cromer and Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey have a big task ahead of them. The pair serve as co-chairs of the Division I Transformation Committee, the group charged with leading Division I through its next several months of collaboration on the future of the division.
Cromer and Sankey joined correspondent Andy Katz for this week's NCAA Social Series to talk about the significance of the vote to approve a new NCAA constitution and what happens now.
"What is it that binds us? And what is it that we share and want to be sure to preserve?" Cromer said. "If you talk to our student-athletes, it's the experience of being a student-athlete. In some ways what happens at the end of a season, while quite powerful and a goal for every student-athlete and team at the beginning of the season, isn't the same thing as what binds them as a community — which is the daily grind, the daily practice, and the daily life of being a student-athlete and being a high achiever both academically and athletically."
"Those of us who are practitioners talk more about championships. We talk more about a common brand. We talk about the value to institutions like mine of being affiliated with Division I and what that means not only for our athletic department but also for our institution."
Cromer and Sankey each acknowledged the challenging road ahead, but the pair emphasized the continued importance of student-athlete support, championship experiences and academics.
"I actually think for all the stress almost 20 years ago onboarding graduation success rates … it has served as a motivation for coaches, for teams, for administrators, for university leadership, and you've seen that academic progress over time," Sankey said. "That's where the right level of national influence through the right level of NCAA regulation can have an enormous impact on young people's lives."
"We're going to be challenged with elevating the student-athlete experience all across the country. There are circumstances with high levels of resources; there are those without. How do we elevate every one of those experiences in ways that have meaning on each of those campuses?"
The Transformation Committee has already started meeting. Its recommendations will need to be endorsed by the Division I Board of Directors.
Now that a new constitution has been approved, each division will adopt additional changes to support its own governance model by August.
