NCAA decision on Power Five will widen the divide

Remarkably, it was just seven years ago that the University of Hawaii was one of three non-Power Five conference teams ranked in the preseason Top 25 football polls.

When the first of this year’s preseason polls — the Amway Coaches Poll (formerly the USA Today/Coaches Poll) — came out last week, there were no teams outside the big five to be found.

It was the first time in more than a decade the so-called mid-majors had been shutout in the preseason rankings. The blanking will likely repeat when the Associated Press poll is revealed next week.

What happens Thursday in Indianapolis, where the NCAA Division I Board of Directors meet, will undoubtedly make that the rule rather than the exception going forward.

The board, which represents almost 350 schools that compete on the Division I level in some sports, is expected to approve a gun-to-the-head autonomy package demanded by the Power Five that will vastly widen the growing chasm between the haves and have-nots.

When approved and put into practice, which could be as soon as January, the 65 schools from the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern and Pac-12 conferences that make up the Power Five will be able to set their own limits on financial aid, agents, health and welfare, recruiting and other issues.

With multi-million dollar TV deals to fund the changes, they can wave good-bye to the 60 other so-called mid-major football-playing schools. The underdog teams we once knew as BCS busters will become an all-but-extinct species.

UH long ago fell from the relevance it enjoyed in the Sugar Bowl season of 2007, of course. But even Boise State and the others that have continued to perform at a high level that threatened the upper crust schools are beginning to lag and that divide will widen considerably as the financial gulf grows and a talent gap is exacerbated.

Three years ago the wider NCAA Division I membership overruled a proposal that would have allowed members to award $2,000 stipends to players, a measure favored by the upper crust.

That no doubt figured in the give-us-what-we-want-or-else threat voiced by SEC commissioner Mike Slive and his brethren. That and overdue benefits for players that will help stave off additional court cases, of course.

Their less-than-subtle message was that unless they get the free hand they want to make their own rules to suit their wishes, they’ll take their ball and go play elsewhere.

As much as the operation of college football might seem to imitate the pros now, wait until the Power Five recast themselves in coming years and up the ante. The athletic arms race will really take off.

That’s a skirmish that schools struggling to balance their books now, much less the legions awash in red ink such as UH, can hardly hope to keep up with.

Once the autonomy push goes through, the have-not schools will be hard-pressed to find their way into the preseason Amway Poll or postseason playoff, even if they dispatch their coaches to moonlight as Amway distributors.

Reach Ferd Lewis flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.