Pac-12 athletes get say in conference decision making

This past January, athletes from the nation's elite college athletics programs voted on proposed NCAA rules changes for the first time. This week, those in the Pac-12 Conference begin getting a formal voice in conference policy making.

This move makes the Pac-12 the first of the five power conferences to take this step. On Wednesday and Thursday in San Francisco, one athlete from each school will participate in meetings that previously had been limited to athletics directors, senior woman administrators and faculty representatives.

This gathering of what is known as the Pac-12 Council comes roughly a year after the schools' CEO's — who decide most of the conference's fundamental governance issues — voted to give the athletes representation.

The final form of that involvement is coming within the conference's existing one-school, one-vote structure. So, like the ADs, woman administrators and faculty reps, the athletes will meet among themselves on Wednesday, then become part of now-four-person delegations from each school for full Council meetings and voting on Thursday.

Until now, the Pac-12's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee — like other such panels at conferences and schools across the nation — had been involved informally in governance.

Commissioner Larry Scott told Paste BN Sports the conference considered the athlete-representation model used at the NCAA convention, in which the 65 schools in the power conferences (plus Notre Dame) each had a vote and 15 athletes — three from each conference — each had a vote.

However, Scott said: "We felt by giving them equal status to athletics directors, faculty reps and senior woman administrators, it was a more substantial involvement and they are part of the decision-making apparatus on behalf of their university … as opposed to being seen as a separate entity with a kind of minority voice."

In separate interviews, Scott; California AD Mike Williams, who chairs the AD's group and Washington athlete rep Faith Morrison each insisted that the athletes will, indeed, have an equal voice. A total of 24 athletes — two from each school — will be involved, with 12 attending the fall Council meeting and 12 the spring meeting.

Scott said he will meet with the athletes' group at each Council session, but at this first one, "they're going to hear directly from me the importance that we place on (athletes' involvement) and our aspiration that they have significant influence over all conference policy going forward."

Morrison, a gymnast, is a junior whose father, Darryl, played football for Arizona and later the NFL's Washington Redskins and whose brother, Sammy, is a freshman on the Arizona football team. She has confidence in her — and fellow athlete reps' — ability to insist that they have meaningful input.

"I have full faith that the student-athletes who are going to be there, including myself, are pretty qualified to be able to handle themselves in advocating for themselves," she said. "I don't think it would ever get to a point in which the student-athletes didn't feel like their voice was being heard without saying something before."

Recalling the way athletes passionately shaped debate on several votes at the NCAA convention in January, Williams said simply: "A strong, well-reasoned voice is going to be influential."

Williams said that while he recognizes that the Pac-12's setup of allotting one vote to each school's four-member delegation may make the athletes appear less consequential than they did at the convention, he doesn't think that will actually be the case.

"At the end of the day," he said, "four votes become one vote, but I wouldn't anticipate that our student-athletes will be on the wrong side of a 3-1 vote very often."

This is exactly how Scott seems to want it.

"A lot of the emphasis of what our reform effort has been about in the conference over the last 18 months has been about prioritizing student-athlete welfare and benefits," he said. "A lot of the transformation going on college sports is around how student-athletes are being treated. … And beyond that, everything we talk about, from sports schedules, to championships, to legislation is being done on behalf of, or with a focus on, the student-athlete. So actually having a student-athlete voice as part of those conversations I think will be enlightening for a lot of our administrators who are involved and I think it will be very powerful."

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