NCAA president: Balance needed between games, rules

GRAPEVINE, Texas — NCAA President Mark Emmert knows some of the organization’s rules are “simply far too complex” and that others are laughed at more than they are followed.

While Emmert supports a package of sweeping rule changes that could start to address some of those issues, he also said Thursday the NCAA has to keep pushing to find the balance between the games and competition that everyone loves and the rules that regulate them.

“It turns out we know how to write rules. One of the problems is sometimes we write lots and lots and lots of rules,” he said before using the analogy of two sides of a coin. “Just as the shiny side of the competition has the side that can also bring dysfunction to it, so too can the regulatory side. And we have to recognize that as we try to balance that coin on its edge.”

In his third state of the NCAA address, Emmert clearly is working toward the same things he talked about a year earlier when he talked about restoring some core principles, such as amateurism over professionalism and abiding by the rules rather than ignoring them.

Of course, abiding by the rules could become easier with what he considers a more common sense approach to the group’s regulatory side.

The NCAA board on Saturday, the NCAA convention’s final day, will vote on that package of 27 proposals. Emmert said he senses support from members for the changes.

Some of the proposals would allow college athletes and recruits to accept more money to cover expenses for non-scholastic events, earn more prize money and allow schools and conference officials to pay for medical expenses of athletes.

They also include the creation of a uniform recruiting calendar for all sports, eliminating regulating how coaches communicate with recruits and how often they can contact them outside of no-contact periods, which will remain in place.