Earlier this month the NCAA Board of Governors appointed 23 members from across all 3 divisions to its Constitution Committee. The Committee will try to identify the key principles within college sports and help construct a new model that both preserves the existing values while allowing for concrete changes to be made in service of all student-athletes. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Committee member Greg Christopher (vice president for administration/director of athletics at Xavier) about how the process will proceed and how the Musketeers basketball team is looking for this fall.
Earlier this month the NCAA Board of Governors announced that it was appointing 23 members (including yourself) to its Constitution Committee that will “identify the core principles that define college sports and propose a new governance model that allows for quicker change without sacrificing broader values”: what are the principles that you believe in the most, and what are the most crucial elements of the new model? I think that college athletics has reached a bit of an inflection point so it is necessary to take a step back. When people have asked me about it in the past I mentioned that the NCAA manual is 451 pages, which we are not trying to rewrite! The constitution itself is relatively brief so the most central “non-negotiable” gets back to the tethering of academics to college athletics. Some people feel this idea is outdated but I believe very strongly in ensuring that our student-athletes are students 1st. I am also committed to broad-based programs with a wide array of opportunities/teams.
NCAA President Mark Emmert has stated that “The time is now for substantive change”: why now rather than 5 years ago or 5 years in the future? You probably could have picked anytime in the past decade but there is currently a lot of “noise in the system” and a continuous march of litigation, as well as conference realignment/equity review. We also need to see where the student-athlete voice fits into this in light of the NCAA v. Alston case because there are so many angles.
The Big East is well represented both by you and Georgetown President John DeGioia: what perspective do you 2 bring while coming from outside a Power 5 football conference? I am glad that our conference has a couple of voices at the table. I think it is a pretty representative group from across D-1. I know the Power-5 get a fair amount of attention but I am glad that there is a wide variety of voices.
The Board of Governors recently announced its historic decision to convene a special constitutional convention in November, which is “intended to propose dramatic changes to the NCAA constitution to reimagine aspects of college sports”: what part of the current constitution do you dislike the most, and what dramatic change are you most eager to propose? We have not really gotten to that point yet so it is premature to speculate. Our 1st step is to try to get some feedback: there was a survey sent throughout D-1 with feedback due early next week that will be compiled. In the months ahead we will pull out the major themes of the input, then craft some proposals by November.
You played football at Miami University in Ohio before your career was cut short due to injury: what impact has that injury had on your career in overseeing other student-athletes (if any)? “Played” is a liberal term! I had 1 too many concussions for my doctor’s liking. It is an invaluable opportunity to serve a new generation of student-athletes and live vicariously through them.
You also have connections to several other schools in the Midwest (worked at Purdue/Bowling Green and are now athletic director at Xavier): is it important to treat them all equally or do different kinds of schools deserve different kinds of constitutional oversight? My perspective is distinctive because my career path is unusual. Each of the 3 schools I worked at come from a different bucket within D-1. The Power-5 have different parameters within D-1 but it seems to work okay from a governance standpoint. However, since we have over 1000 schools within all 3 divisions, we might need to see how tethered the divisions should be to each other.
In 2018 you were named the Division I-AAA Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year and in 2020 you won the Mike Cleary Organizational Leadership Award: what did it mean to you to receive such outstanding honors? I think it is more of a reflection of the people who work around me and the team that we have. It is obviously appreciated and I feel humbled, but it is a recognition of the entire team.
What is the hardest part of being an AD during a pandemic, and how are things looking for the fall semester? The last 18 months have been challenging as we tried to work through it. We are an enterprise that is in disruption within an industry (higher education) that is in disruption. We are 2 weeks in but so far so good: we have a great group of athletes/coaches. There is less uncertainty this year than there was last year, when there was more anxiety. We were on campus last year, which not every other school was, but now that we are in the “2nd cycle” we have a better idea of how to operate.
The Musketeers made the NCAA tourney 26 times in 33 years from 1986-2018 but have not made it in any of the past 3 years: how much pressure does the program’s great track record put on current coach Travis Steele? I think that pressure comes every year, which is part of the fabric here at Xavier, and we embrace that. I think the past 3 years have gone about as we expected while Travis remade the roster, but at the end of the day we want to get into the NCAA tourney via the “final 2% of the climb”.
Last year the basketball team started 11-2 before losing 6 of its final 8 games: what are the expectations like for a roster that has a bunch of returning upperclassmen (including Nate Johnson/Adam Kunkel/Paul Scruggs/Ben Stanley)? We do have a lot of returnees. We got off to a hot start last year and then had 2 extensive COVID pauses that really threw a wrench into the continuity of how we were playing, which turned us into a different team. Nate Johnson’s injury did not help: when you lose 1 of the top 3-PT shooters in the nation (45.2 3P% last year), it makes it hard to win games.