Both the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association (CRCA) for women's rowing and the Intercollegiate Rowing Coaches Association (IRCA) for men's rowing have signed on to a statement by the Intercollegiate Coach Association Coalition (ICAC) supporting a the Knight Commission proposal to 'tie revenue distribution and spending in NCAA Division I programs to their broader educational mission;' in particular this would redistribute funds and resources more equitably across all sports.
The Commission has recommended a 'C.A.R.E. Model' for the governance of Olympic sports, for 'Connecting Athletics Revenues with the Educational Model of College Sports' that would alter 'both the distribution criteria and uses of funds for more than $3.5 billion distributed annually by the NCAA, CFP, and Division I conferences.'
The Commission goes on to state five core principles that it believes are 'absent, in whole or in part, from the current system:'
Further, the report addresses issues of sport-specific spending, including caps and thresholds for coaching and staff compensation, severance pay, and athletic facilities; gender and racial equity; and creating incentives to reward schools that sponsor more sports than the D1 minimums. These efforts are to be supported by spending a certain percentage of funds on direct support for student athlete education, health, safety, well-being, gender and racial equity, broad-based sports participation & university academics.
The commission requests that either the Congress of the United States or the respective college sports governing bodies.
In signing on to the effort, the IRCA stated that the "IRCA, although a new organization, is pleased to align and stand with our fellow collegiate sports during this unprecedented time for college athletics. Tectonic shifts are occurring and while most of the emphasis has been in Football and Basketball, the vast majority of kids competing today in college are not in those two sports, but their value to American culture, to their respective schools and alumni, is just as profound. The Intercollegiate Rowing Coaches Association is proud to join any effort that protects and even broadens these opportunities."
Madeline Davis of the CRCA adds that "The CRCA is proud to stand alongside twenty-one of our fellow collegiate coaching associations from a broad range of sports, including the IRCA, in fighting to protect rowing as well as to value and improve the overall collegiate experience of our student athletes."
Read the full Knight Commission Connecting Athletics Revenues with the Educational Model of College Sports (C.A.R.E. Model) report here.
See the Commission's series on Transforming the D-I Model here.