If anyone knows the issues within the NCAA, it’s Betsy Mitchell.
She was an athlete at one of college athletics’ richest juggernauts, Texas, has been a coach at Division I’s lowest tier and now is the athletic director of one of the NCAA’s smallest schools, Division III Caltech. She intimately understands the disparities between the NCAA’s 1,000 member schools. And she’s got a suggestion to fix it.
“The commercial priorities of some members means they need to go do their own thing,” says Mitchell. “I kind of wish they would.”
The rapid growth of a now-bloated Division I and surging revenues at the top of college sports have created an untenable situation: schools governing under the same umbrella despite striking disparities.