The commissioner opined for over 20 minutes about several issues, most notably about the House vs. NCAA settlement and its ramifications.
The Mid-American Conference held their annual football media day on Friday, June 19th at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Over the years, the event has served as a sort of unofficial kickoff of the athletic calendar, and as such, MAC commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher starts the proceedings with a public address and media availability with assembled media.
As per tradition, Steinbrecher hit on a number of topics concerning the college landscape, with a special focus this year on access and modernization in what was an unusually pointed address.
Steinbrecher started his address by welcoming back Pete Lembo into the MAC coaching fraternity, as the former Ball State head coach returned from a sojurn through the college football ranks to take the Buffalo job this past offseason. Steinbrecher also noted current Toledo athletic director Bryan Blair’s placement on Sports Business Journal’s “40 under 40” list and assistant commissioner/director of communications Jeremy Guy’s 20th year with the conference.
Steinbrecher then went into some of the key events to happen over the offseason, including two NFL Draft selections this past April in Detroit (Toledo’s Quinyon Mitchell and Western Michigan’s Marshawn Kneeland) and one selection to the NBA Draft (Akron’s Enrique Freeman) in New York earlier this month.
“The message should be evident: come to the Mid-American Conference, develop and excel, and you will get your chance…”, Steinbrecher said. “You can be as good as you want to be right here.”
Steinbrecher also noted some standout performances in “non-revenue” sports, with Western Michigan volleyball, Miami University field hockey and softball, Bowling Green baseball and MAC gymnastics all getting a mention.
The first major topic of national significance to be addressed was the question of student-athletes as employees.
The Mid-American Conference has been one of a handful in the NCAA where a student-athlete leadership council has a say in the league’s governance since the mid-2010s, and this year is no exception.
Per Steinbrecher, the MAC Council of Student-Athletes (COSA) have drafted a “white paper” which was delivered to the United States Congress, declaring they do not believe themselves to be employees. This would be the first such council to make a declaration on the issue.
“We have reached a point where we will need assistance to bring [NCAA] issues to conclusion,” Steinbrecher said. “Decisions will be made either by the courts or Congress… We need to continue to engage with Congress to determine how student-athletes should be classified— non-employees, employees or something else.”
The MAC leadership, along with its COSA, has actively lobbied Congress over the last year in regards to come of the NCAA’s current issues, with Steinbrecher saying the MAC is one of the few non-Autonomous conferences to do so. The MAC has made its position clear that it does not consider their student-athletes to be employees.
Steinbrecher then sidelined to some of the new MAC initiatives as it relates to sports, announcing a partnership with Officially Human, an organization “dedicated to improving the treatment and retention of sports officials at all levels”, as well as the addition of women’s rowing as a member sport starting in 2025-26.
After the sidebar, Steinbrecher returned to the topic of future NCAA governance, citing Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer: Thoughts of the Nature of Mass Movement” when discussing future uncertainty while there are unanswered questions surrounding the present.
“This has been an interesting, stimulating, at times frustrating and always fascinating past year as the new age of intercollegiate athletics has started to take shape,” Steinbrecher mused. “… As we peak over the horizon to the future— and that is where our focus needs to be— it is instructive to contemplate how we got here, the factors driving change and ensure the best of the past with us.”
The need for collaboration and united change has been something of a theme over the past few State of the Conference addresses, with 2022’s speech taking a revolutionary tone and 2023 taking a more sentimental approach.
This go-around, Steinbrecher’s words were more pessimistic, expressing disappointment in the league for what he perceived as a shift in priorities, using examples of unnamed coaches, administrators and student-athletes to highlight the confusion of the new era.
While acknowledging and understanding the general sentiment about financial and movement freedoms for student-athletes, Steinbrecher was still strident in his defense of collegiate sports as an institution.
“I am listening and reading a lot about NIL and other financial benefits for student-athletes and those are all worthy conversations to be having,” Steinbrecher said. “Yet I am hearing virtually nothing about maintaining and growing the educational attainment of a talented and diverse group of young men and women.”
“We used to take extraordinary pride in graduations, which has seemingly taken a backseat as economic factors has taken priority over educational outcomes,” Steinbrecher continued. “If intercollegiate athletics is to remain tethered to higher education, it is imperative the participants are, in fact, scholar-athletes. Not just in name, but in practice.”
This frustration was also apparent when discussing the recent House vs. NCAA settlement, with Steinbrecher taking the Autonomous conferences and the NCAA itself to task for shutting out the other NCAA Division I conferences from negotiations while also asking them to take on a sizeable chunk of the burden without the safety net of a cushy TV contract.
“It is incredibly difficult for our coaches and our administrators to not only be preparing for this season, but be contemplating the future having little or no feedback or opportunity for feedback,” Steinbrecher said. “That is not a criticism, but is simply a statement of fact.”
Steinbrecher then opined that despite the narratives around the NCAA’s effectiveness, the system itself has largely worked for the member student-atheltes in helping them attain an education while playing sports— a point of pride for the conference.
Steinbrecher suggested the NCAA’s recent pivot to financial concerns is a danger to programs and conferences who do not have the same resources as Autonomous schools, as they will potentially have to cull their offerings to survive the House settlement being negotiated on their behalf by the NCAA. (The inference here is that Olympic sports could be under the microscope, with Steinbrecher noting 75 percent of American athletes in the Olympics— as well as a sizeable foreign contingent— went through the university system for training during his commentary.) Steinbrecher said the issue gone unaddressed in internal discussions despite media intrigue.
Steinbrecher then briefly addressed the future of NCAA governance, which has been under the microscope recently after a proposed bifurcation of Division I athletics was unveiled on Thursday morning, saying only there would be “much more in this area” in the future.
Pivoting once again to on-field discussions, Steinbrecher announced the introduction of sideline technology— and a partnership with Microsoft— for football starting in 2024, including tablets and player-to-coach communication.
Steinbrecher also made the case for the MAC being one of the more competitive conferences in the NCAA, citing Tom Fornelli’s research into one-score games and blowouts, which concluded the MAC has the third-most one-score games of the 10 conferences (41.51 percent) and second-fewest in blowout scores (38.1 percent.)
“There are no secrets in this league, and there’s little difference in resources among the teams, so the playing field is as level as you will find across all [of] FBS,” Steinbrecher concluded. “It is part of what makes #MACtion so compelling.”
The MAC football season kicks of on Thursday, Aug. 30th, with four teams in play simultaneously, and concludes on Saturday, Dec. 5th at Ford Field in Detroit.