Jon Steinbrecher was on a roll.<\/p>\n
The Mid-American Conference commissioner quoted song lyrics from Willie Nelson and Kacey Musgraves. He compared the Power 4 college football conferences to Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter books. He also delivered the MAC\u2019s best mic-drop moment since Northern Illinois beat Notre Dame two years ago in South Bend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure if the right response to all of this is, \u2018Be careful for what you ask for because you may get it,\u2019 or, B, \u2018Karma\u2019s a b\u2014-,\u2019\u201d Steinbrecher said last week in a \u201cstate of the conference\u201d address<\/a>. \u201cBecause we\u2019re now living with what happens when the autonomy conferences make the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n Steinbrecher\u2019s comments reflected a growing resentment toward the most powerful conferences and their roles in undermining the stability of college sports. Tensions between the rich and the not-so-rich are nothing new, but a year of failed negotiations, power plays and broken promises has driven an even deeper wedge.<\/p>\n This was Steinbrecher just 10 months ago, speaking at the MAC\u2019s football kickoff event:<\/p>\n \u201cMoving forward, it is becoming more and more clear that the path for success is less fragmentation, more collaboration among all of us \u2014 certainly among the 10 FBS (conferences), and certainly among the five or six non-autonomous FBS (conferences),\u201d Steinbrecher said then.<\/p>\n Less than a year later, college football is closer than ever to a major crack-up. People in the SEC are talking openly about splitting away from the other conferences<\/a>. Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard is calling for the Big 12 to break off from the SEC and the Big Ten<\/a>. Every conference and every school is looking out for itself, sabotaging attempts at lasting reform.<\/p>\n So much for collaboration.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth laying out the background behind Steinbrecher\u2019s comments. In 2014, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors voted to give more autonomy to the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and Pac-12 as a way of pacifying the bigger conferences and keeping Division I\u2019s sprawling coalition of 360-plus schools intact.<\/p>\n Since then, those conferences \u2014 minus the Pac-12, which collapsed and reconstituted itself as a nonautonomous conference<\/a> \u2014 have driven major upheaval through realignment, changes to college football\u2019s postseason and the race to build the best and most expensive football roster.<\/p>\n The House v. NCAA settlement was supposed to bring a modicum of stability by limiting how much schools can spend on their rosters and creating a new entity, the College Sports Commission, to vet third-party NIL deals and ensure schools were complying with the settlement terms. Still, the wealthiest schools don\u2019t want to play by the rules they created, so the chaos continues.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look up the term \u2018ungovernable,\u2019 I am convinced a handful of conference logos pop up, and they\u2019re all autonomy logos,\u201d Steinbrecher said.<\/p>\n College sports leaders have spent years begging Congress to intervene, so far to no avail. The SCORE Act, introduced last summer, failed to gain the necessary support in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now the focus has shifted to the Protect College Sports Act<\/a>, a new bill introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell that will be the subject of a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n Skepticism is the appropriate response to anything involving Congress \u2014 especially if the Big Ten and the SEC aren\u2019t on board with the new legislation, which could set limits on their power and open the door for the pooling of media rights, a concept that would seem to help the Big 12 and ACC more than it helps the Big Ten and SEC.<\/p>\n The big conferences wanted more autonomy, and now they have it. This upward distribution of power creates fissures at every point: between the Power 4 and the Group of 6, between the Power 2 and the Big 12\/ACC, between the wealthiest schools in each league and the schools that are strapped for cash.<\/p>\n