McFeely: NCAA, Power 5 schools shake down little guys like the Summit League

No. 1, the Power 5 (the Southeastern, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast, Big 12 and the soon-to-be-defunct Pac-12 conferences) care only about how they can maximize the money coming into their coffers because they have such huge bills to pay. Period. Nothing else matters.

No. 2, the NCAA (an Indianapolis-based organization that has long governed college athletics) cares only about preserving itself and the nice-paying jobs it provides to those running it. Period. Nothing else matters.

No. 3, the rest of Division I (27 other conferences in FBS, FCS and even those that don't have football) is getting punched in the face and having their lunch money stolen by the Power 5 leaders and the NCAA because those two entities are only concerned about what we previously told you they were concerned about. Period. If either of the first two entities tries to deny it, they are lying.

So in the next couple of days when social media and sports web sites are ablaze with the news that college leaders have signed off on a settlement in the

anti-trust class-action lawsuit, think of those three things and you'll better understand what's happening.

Power 5 = maximum money at any cost.

NCAA = survival mode.

Rest of Division I = taking it in the shorts to assure the Power 5 and NCAA get what they want.

Put a different way: Alabama is shaking down Western Illinois with the blessing of the NCAA.

Vito Corelone is shaking down a mom-and-pop shop with the cops opening the till.

There isn't enough space in this column to peel back and explain the many layers of

. There are places on the web to find out the bloody details. All the top college sports writers like Ross Dellenger, Pat Forde and Nichole Auerbach have written about it. I'd suggest a column by Gregg Doyel in the Indianapolis Star that breaks it down accurately and offers razor-sharp opinion.

A Summit League source told me that Doyel's column is "spot-on."

But the basics are this:

The NCAA and the Power 5 knew they were going to lose the

case in court, probably to the tune of $20 billion in damages. So they came up with a acceptable settlement, about $2.8 billion, and a plan to pay for it over the next 10 years — all with exactly zero input from everybody else in Division I. The Summit League, the Horizon League, the Big Sky Conference — all mid-major Group of 5 and FCS conferences, and even those who don't sponsor football like the Big East — were completely shut out of the talks.

Over the weekend, the NCAA and Power 5 let their plan be known. Basically, it called for the NCAA to cover 40% of the damages while the schools will fund 60% over the 10 years.

"At issue is the schools’ portion," wrote Dellenger. "The power conferences will pay about $664 million in contributions to the damages. The other 27 non-power conferences will pay $990 million."

The money, the settlement says, will come from what the NCAA distributes to conferences for things like the NCAA men's basketball tournament payouts all the leagues get. There are other pots of distribution money the NCAA will cut from, too.

For the Summit League, it's estimated the NCAA will withold about $2 million over each of the next 10 years. That would be roughly $200,000 per school per year, which amounts to a rounding error for the big boys. But for Summit League schools, it's baked into their budgets every year. It's money they count on.

Ohio State of the Big Ten has a $280 million annual athletic budget, for example. Missouri-Kansas City of the Summit League has a $15 million budget.

Smaller conferences, understandably, went bananas when they found out the split, which the NCAA/Power 5 justifies by saying NCAA distributions go to the little guys at that rate. Which is horse-hockey. Small-conference commissioners said the problem belongs mostly to the big boys and their football and men's basketball programs, which would get 90% of the settlement money.

So the little guys counter-proposed Monday that the NCAA and the Power 5 reverse the liability of who's paying what. It took the NCAA/Power 5 less than a day to shoot down that idea and say they were going with the original settlement.

The NCAA is afraid of the Power 5 conferences splitting away to form their own quasi-professional sports league, and taking all that TV money and prestige with them. So the NCAA will do whatever commissioner Greg Sankey and the SEC tells it to do.

Meantime, the Summit League and its ilk will take a $20-$30 million hit over the next decade.

It's a bunch of eye-glazing numbers and percentages, yes. But it's important to the Summit Leagues and North Dakota States of the world.

We'll see how all this shakes out, but there is already talk of some programs, scholarships or staff being cut at the Division I have-nots — think of Western Illinois or Indiana State, for examples — to pay for the NCAA's settlement.

The Power 5 schools can afford to pay their fair share of the settlement, because they have so much TV revenue and deep-pocketed donors. They can afford just about anything. They choose to not pay their fair share because, well, only suckers do that. Better to have the Summit League and Ohio Valley Conference pay the bills, right?

Meantime, the NCAA facilitates the madness.

To know why, remember the three points emphasized at the beginning of this column. They'll never fail you.