McCombs: Bobby Cremins says NCAA is sweating, and he's right

Bobby Cremins isn't afraid to admit he doesn't know exactly where the future of college athletics is leading. But he thinks it's the right general direction.

The white-haired basketball legend, who lives on Hilton Head Island, spoke at Monday night's meeting of the Athletic Club of the Lowcountry, where he shared some of his thoughts on his time in college basketball, the history of the ACC and the NCAA landscape in general with a crowd of more than 100 at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Bluffton.

With the NCAA giving the big five conferences -- the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12 and SEC -- autonomy, college athletics' largest governing body is in the uncertain and unfamiliar position of following the lead of its most powerful schools.

Among the first topics the Big 5 have addressed with their newly acquired power are "cost of attendance" and guaranteed four-year scholarships.

Cost of attendance involves giving athletes some amount of money above and beyond their tuition, books and room and board. And guaranteed scholarships will go a long way to discouraging coaches from pulling the scholarships of athletes that may not have lived up to expectations in their athletic field.

"We need to guarantee their education," Cremins said Monday. "We need to guarantee their medical insurance. We need to guarantee them that they'll be taken care of."

While Cremins supports these measures, like most people he's uncertain exactly how the cost of attendance plan might work. And he makes it clear he's not in favor of flat-out paying the athletes.

But he understands how the athletes see things in a college sports landscape with the big television contracts and huge coaching salaries.

"We've got too much money and we've got to do something for the athletes," he said.

While the Big 5 conferences will now play a big role in determining the direction the NCAA as a whole takes, Cremins said it's important that the new power structure results in solutions everyone can live with.

"What's important to me is that we keep it together, that it doesn't totally blow up," he said.

Cremins doesn't seem to think it will blow up. For a couple of reasons.

First, Big 5 or mid-major, there will still be rules and there will still be the need for enforcement.

While Cremins says he never believed he'd see a situation like the NCAA's involvement in the Penn State scandal, unless the biggest conferences are going to create another body to perform those duties, the NCAA is needed.

The second might be even bigger.

March Madness.

The NCAA basketball tournament simply cannot exist as we know it without the other 250-plus schools the Big 5 are so eager to leave behind.

"The Final Four is special," Cremins said. "It's the event. It's the Super Bowl, the World Series of college basketball."

Cremins said the powers that be will never allow things to reach a point where the Big 5 are forced to choose between their football interests (the new College Football Playoff) and March Madness.

And he's right. The money all but guarantees that.

The NCAA's latest deal with CBS and Turner to televise the tournament was for more than $11 billion over 14 years.

Nobody is walking away from that.

Cremins says the NCAA is sweating. For the first time in who knows when, college athletics' governing body with a traditionally painful lack of self awareness doesn't know what the future holds. The NCAA is just following along like everyone else.

"I don't know where it's going," Cremins said. "It's going to be interesting to watch. But I think it's going in the right direction."

This story was originally published January 20, 2015 at 12:15 AM with the headline "McCombs: Bobby Cremins says NCAA is sweating, and he's right."