Every decision, every action, and every well thought-out plan has known and unknown consequences. If the NCAA started transitioning some of the I-A football and basketball programs to my proposed NCAA Pro-League there would consequences, and not all of them would be positive.
Existing Conferences
The new NCAA Football Pro-League will likely keep many, if not all of the existing major conferences. There is no reason to eliminate the AAS, ACC, BIG-10, BIG-12, PAC-12, or SEC when those can be the divisions in the new league. Like the NFL with its two conferences and eight divisions, the NCAA Pro-League can have two conferences and six to ten divisions (depending on how things would be divided). By keeping all of the conferences, the rich history and fan loyalty will be easily transferred to the Pro-League.
Competition
With the NCAA Football Pro-League competition would start in week one. Pro-League teams would not be able to play lower division teams because that would require professional athletes to play amateure athletes, something the NCAA would not allow. With the season starting in week one we would no longer see blowouts as I highlighted in my previous article Competitive? and teams like Georgia would not play New Mexico State or Coastal Carolina anymore.
Playoff System and Bowl Games
The NCAA Football Pro-League could implement a robust playoff system that would include many of the bowl games that are currently running. During the 2011-2012 academic year there were 35 bowl games and 5 all-star games. If the NCAA Pro-League copied the NFL playoff format exactly it could use 11 of the 35 bowl games with the rest used for the I-A division (non-professional). The NCAA-Pro League would also reduce the number of all-star games to one (the all-star game could use one of the bowl games such as...the Hawaii Bowl).
Ownership
An NCAA Pro-League team would need to be majority owned by its cooperating academic institution with minority owners. This would be needed because it would get messy if Iowa State’s owners wanted to move the team somewhere else because the city of Ames and Iowa State did not want to go halfsies on a stadium. The team’s name, identity, brand, and history would be exclusive to the locality so in case a team wanted to get up and leave, a school would not lose their 100-years of history because of the whim of an owner like Al Davis.
Stadiums
What to do about stadiums? What will the city of Ames, Auburn, Gainesville, Tempe, et cetera do about teams wanting new stadiums? They will pretty much do what they are doing today; ask the public to pay for a portion, ask alumni to pay for a portion, and then bankroll the rest as team debt. Texas A&M, from what it seems, has done a great job of asking their alumni to donate millions to renovate Kyle Field so why not make that the norm?
Relegation and Promotion?
Not really relegation and promotion, but there would need to be a process for teams in I-A to prepare and eventually transition to the NCAA Pro-League. Example; if Boise State was not able to make the jump initially they could prepare for several years by raising money, creating a business plan, work on agreements, and set-up a transition plan to be able to become professional when the time is right.
On the flip side if a team was in the NCAA Pro-League and wanted to jump back down to I-A football there would have to be a contingency plan allowing for that. Besides the ownership and money aspects, the athletes would go from being professional to student athletes with all the rules of the NCAA applying. Most of the players who were playing for the team would probably leave requiring the new I-A version of the team to recruit all new players and new coaches.
Bankruptcy
One serious consequence of an NCAA Pro-League would be bankruptcy by individual teams. Because the NCAA Pro-League teams would be outside the control of their cooperating institutions, they could go bankrupt if badly mismanaged. Recently, say the last few decades, the NFL has had zero bankruptcies with most bankruptcies being in hockey or occasionally baseball. This is a testament to the popularity of football and the need to have well managed teams that are financially secure.
Opting Out
Some big name schools might opt to not be part of the NCAA Pro-League signing separate deals with networks creating competition between the NCAA Pro-League and I-A (such as Notre Dame). Since the NCAA would be ‘in-charge’ of I-A and be a majority partner in the Pro-League this scenario would hopefully be avoided but could still work if all parties negotiated for the best possible outcome.
Another scenario of opting out is some of the big name schools might not want to be part of the NCAA Pro-League. Schools such as BYU, Boston College, Duke, and Vanderbilt might decide to not be in the Pro-League. This would be a win-win because it would mean that there would be history and competition not only in the Pro-League but also in I-A. Unfortunately for the schools in I-A there would be less money to go around but by being in the NCAA and not the NCAA Pro-League these schools would be publically acknowledging that as institutions of higher education their core missions are to educate their students and not field football teams.
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