But here's the funny part. Change the Board of Directors structure is a fine idea, but that board PASSED the stipend and all the other various deregulations that later got shot down - and that was with the current makeup of the BoD (11 FBS votes, 7 non-FBS votes). So the problem with the governance structure isn't the BoD, it's that it only takes 20% pushback on a particular issue to request a headcount vote of all the membership, or that it only takes 36% pushback on a particular issue to suspend it. Then, the headcount vote requires a 5/8 majority to overturn a particular piece of legislation. To quote Pete Thamel's article today:
Quote:This is not about the divisive $2,000 stipend that's become a convenient anecdote to tie to the unhappiness and unrest (some of the Big 5 leagues are not in favor of the stipend). This is much bigger than that.
Read More:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college...z2a5mwZuKX
So I really have no idea why this is happening now. I disagree that the O'Bannon lawsuit has much influence here, although as the OP pointed out the P5 have far more at risk there than the rest of D1. Delany said yesterday he intends to fight it all the way, and I think the NCAA will do just that. Besides, even the preliminary verdict is years down the road. I also agree with Thamel that the stipend really is acting as a strawman here. Even as passed, it was up to the individual conferences to decide to implement it or not; there was no mandate. There's a lot of saber-rattling here, but to what end? What do the P5 get out of a new governance structure?
More power? Perhaps, but they already have a strong influence and recent history shows what they want happens and that they can't even show solidarity on those actions that clearly benefit them and them alone. So what does more power really get them that they don't already have?
More money? Perhaps, but they already get the lions' share of that at the moment, at least on the football side. The NCAA does have over $500M in net assets and will pull in over $1B/yr in revenue over the next decade.
But neither of those is particularly pressing. About the only thing that's really pressing is the CFP, and the NCAA has virtually no say in that at all. There has to be something else.