Commissioner Q&A, part 2: On NIL enforcement, transfers and NCAA tournament

Julie Roe Lach’s first year as commissioner of the Horizon League coincided with one of the most consequential periods in the history of college athletics. Universities endured enormous financial strains stemming from the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. Student-athletes confronted mental health challenges. Two variants forced disruptions to practice and game schedules. And all of this turbulence was set against the backdrop of the dramatically changing face of college sports, which saw the dawn of the NIL era, the landmark Alston Supreme Court ruling, a dizzying summer of conference realignment and the ongoing re-imagining of the NCAA’s constitution.

On3 caught up with Roe Lach, who had been the league’s deputy commissioner since 2014, to talk about her biggest takeaway from her first year as commissioner, concerns about federal intervention in college sports and issues with the transfer portal. Given her extensive experience working for more than 15 years at the NCAA, most recently as vice president of enforcement from 2010-13, Roe Lach is uniquely qualified to speak to the distinct challenges of policing new-age recruiting inducement schemes disguised as NIL deals.

This is part two of a wide-ranging interview (part one is here), and it has been lightly edited for clarity and context.

Q: Some believe that deep-pocketed boosters at Power 5 schools uniting to pool funds for NIL deals could trigger a new type of arms race, leading to new types of recruiting inducement schemes. Where does this rate on your concern radar at the Power 5 level?

ROE LACH: I’m not as concerned about that at the Horizon League level. I am concerned about that nationally, just as it relates to, “Hey, we need to have some integrity in this collegiate model.” To me, the two big pieces of that when we keep talking about the model are, one, the connection of academics and sport. Two, you want to have that proverbial level playing field when it comes to recruitment, so you’ve got a fair shot whenever you’re offering this scholarship to student-athletes. My former life was in enforcement, so I’ve seen some of the very high-profile instances up close where people are willing to throw a lot of money at a prospect or prospects’ handlers or family to get the prospect to come. I don’t think that’s going away. If anything, I think NIL has brought some of that above the line, so to speak, and, unfortunately, now they’re getting a tax write-off while they’re recruiting the prospects. We had some guardrails in the NCAA package that we planned to adopt prior to the Alston decision coming down, which essentially put us all on notice relative to the type of regulation that we should not be doing at the national level. So the NIL model that the Division I members wanted to pass included more restrictions around the booster piece. I do think that’s where, if federal intervention happens, there can be some positive layers to it. … I think that’s where some level of federal oversight could help because right now it’s hard for us as NCAA members to legally regulate that space.

Q: For months, the NCAA showed no appetite for wanting to investigate NIL deals. Recently it has signaled that it is at least preliminarily investigating some deals. Should the NCAA be the entity to act as the enforcement arm in NIL deals?

ROE LACH: I think right now, they absolutely should because that’s our only entity the way the current structure is set up. I fully support this recent move, where the NCAA enforcement staff has said, “We’re going to investigate these issues.” You need to have some level of accountability and then hopefully a deterrent for the future if they are able to uncover facts that do support that some type of violation occurred. NIL, even currently, still can’t be a recruiting inducement. So if that is, in fact, what’s happening and they can demonstrate that, then I think that those schools and boosters need to be held accountable to the highest extent. Long term, who should be enforcing that? I think that’s part of this larger Division I model. What should our regulatory function be? Number one, what rules should we have? And then, number two, how do we enforce those?

Q: Investigating sort of old-school recruiting inducement schemes was challenging enough for the NCAA without subpoena power. But investigating NIL deals is an even more challenging task, generally speaking, because the crux of the case hinges on intent, right? Was the intent of the deal to steer recruits to a particular school?

ROE LACH: Intent is really hard to prove. You’ve already said it, but the lack of subpoena power, especially with boosters, and you can require boosters to hand over documentation. And if they say no, then the recourse is they are disassociated from the school. That just means they lose their season tickets, and they are still going to show up at the games, they’re still going to have a presence in the athletics department. So they become more of an underground booster, as opposed to the more traditional. That is not enough, frankly, of a disincentive. To me, that goes back to where there could be some positives of federal intervention because if you had subpoena power and some sort of federal oversight, that’s going to be much more of a reason, by boosters or other actors, to not engage in this conduct because there could be a threat of some sort of investigation or even federal penalty.

Q: The transfer portal has unleashed what some have called the free-agency era. Is it out of control and should it be reined in?

ROE LACH: I think we definitely need to improve. I don’t have the immediate solution. As tough as it is, I like the free movement that we are giving our student-athletes. The tough part is, and data supports this, the more you transfer, your academics suffer, your likelihood of graduating on time suffers. That’s what we have to figure out. Part of it, though, is we’re going to have a surge, if you will, initially here in the first couple years of student-athletes really exploring, “Is the grass really greener?” They’re going to realize that sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. And then the worst-case scenario is those who enter the portal and don’t find a new home and have been kicked out of their prior home, meaning they’ve lost their scholarship. That’s unfortunate because then those student-athletes, they probably lost their opportunity on education at this point, or at least the scholarship piece of it. We have to find those student-athletes and use that as education for others who are considering entering the transfer portal and understanding there are consequences here, meaning you could lose your scholarship, or if you transfer, it might not be a better option. And here’s 10 stories that hopefully will resonate, and then at least be a point of pause before that student-athlete chooses to make the move. But we certainly need to figure out how to shore it up.

The future of the NCAA tournament

Q: Are you concerned that, in basketball down the road, Power 5 leagues could essentially break away and stage their own postseason tournament, essentially keeping out mid-major leagues?

ROE LACH: As a former student-athlete, and now working in college sports for 20-plus years, there’s so much magic around March Madness. Part of it is the Cinderella story, or even just the underdog. I believe, and as I’ve talked with my Division I colleagues, commissioners and ADs, there is a lot of support and recognition that the current March Madness is so special, and we don’t want to change that and somehow create a secondary tournament or primary. We want to allow that to continue to be inclusive. Does the bracket expand? I don’t know, it could. But I think where we are right now, with a full Division I championship, especially in men’s and women’s basketball, is special. And there’s a collective agreement and unity around that.

Q: Last question: Do you feel the men’s and women’s Final Four should be staged in the same city in the coming years? I’ve heard compelling arguments on both sides.

ROE LACH: I’m always up for a good pilot. I fully support and like the Kaplan report recommendations. They did a very thorough review. That was obviously one of them. I really like the idea, and I’m on the women’s basketball oversight committee. What’s the harm in trying? And I think Indianapolis — I’ll put my plug in — is the perfect place to do that because we just pulled off hosting all of the men’s tournament here. I do think it could be pretty special. I’m not worried about the overshadow. I think there could be a lot of synergies coming from it. The other compelling idea I’ve heard is different weekends. So you’re really having an incredible women’s Final Four and then men’s, or vice versa. I do like that idea. To split cities definitely does divide attention, divide synergies. As commissioners, we try to travel back and forth, which is really tough this year between New Orleans and Minneapolis. A lot of us are trying to figure out those travel logistics. So either bring them together or consider different weekends. As we’ve talked, everything is changing. So why not try this and figure out what we learn from it and take it forward into the future. But I think it’s absolutely right to try it.