Boards of Trustees Are Being Left Out of the Biggest Decisions in College Athletics

Editor’s Note: This AGB blog post describes the dynamic environment for intercollegiate athletics as of July 2026. For updates, see AGB’s Top Public Policy Issues Facing Governing Boards in 2025–2026, and for additional key questions for boards see Top Strategic Issues for Boards 2026–2027. AGB will also host The Governance Challenge in College Athletics: Mission, Finance, and Board Oversight in a New Era, November 10–11, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Although the November conference will focus primarily on issues affecting universities in NCAA Division I, everyone is welcome to attend. AGB will broaden the discussion and related issues when it hosts its Foundation Leadership Forum, January 24–26, 2027, and the National Conference on Trusteeship, March 13–15, 2027, in Washington, D.C.

The landscape of intercollegiate athletics is changing rapidly, yet many boards of trustees are finding themselves on the sidelines of the most consequential decisions affecting their institutions. The exclusion of trustees from conversations about these issues was evident at the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing in early June on the Protect College Sports Act, a bill designed to bring stability to intercollegiate athletics. Congress invited a coach, an athletic director, a university president, a conference commissioner, and a student athlete to speak, but no trustee participated.¹

The Senate hearing was not the only place where trustees’ voices have been omitted. Athletic conference realignment has reshaped the intercollegiate sports map at an unprecedented pace over the past few years, with universities making decisions involving millions of dollars in media revenue, enrollment incentives for athletes, travel costs, and institutional reputation, with substantial effects on student success and well-being.

In many cases, presidents, athletic directors, and conference officials have negotiated and executed these moves with limited direct engagement from governing boards. For example, when UCLA announced its decision to leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in June 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom, an ex officio member of the University of California Board of Regents, complained that the decision “was done in isolation. It was done without any regental oversight or support.”² The board ultimately approved the decision in December 2022, months after the public announcement.³

The implementation of revenue-sharing models with student athletes following legal settlements and the continuing evolution of name, image, and likeness (NIL) policies have created new financial obligations and strategic challenges for institutions. These changes carry significant implications for university budgets, academic priorities, and long-term institutional sustainability. Yet governing boards often receive updates after key commitments have already been made, rather than serving as active participants in shaping these policies and mapping a strategic direction. Trustees, whose fiduciary responsibility is to oversee institutional risk and ensure that strategy aligns with mission and values, are frequently placed in a reactive rather than proactive role.

When the Big Ten conference proposed a $2.4 billion private equity deal in 2025, trustees at member institutions across the conference pushed back. Several trustees raised concerns “about the lack of transparency [in] the deal, saying they have received little information about the arrangement and yet been asked to rubber-stamp it on a compressed timeline,” according to an article in Inside Higher Ed.⁴ Similar complaints emerged from other institutions considering the ramifications of an infusion of private equity.

At the same time, the growing influence of external stakeholders—including conferences, multimedia and broadcast partners, legal advisers, sports agents, and donors—has concentrated decision-making authority among a relatively small group of institution and conference executives, sometimes excluding trustees from any oversight role. For example, when institutions create separate LLCs (limited liability companies) to house athletic commercial operations board oversight of the new entity is at best ambiguous. Kim Schatzel, a former president of Towson University and the University of Louisville, rightly notes in The Chronicle of Higher Education that “the university’s board holds a clear duty to the institution and its educational mission, but an LLC’s governance is determined by its operating agreement, not the university’s bylaws.”⁵

AGB has long held that boards of trustees have a fundamental fiduciary responsibility to oversee all significant aspects of the institutions they govern, including intercollegiate athletics. As athletics programs increasingly influence university finances, reputation, enrollment, donor engagement, and legal risk, board oversight is no longer optional—it is essential. Trustees are charged with ensuring that institutional resources are used responsibly and that major strategic decisions align with the college or university’s mission and values. Although boards should not manage the day-to-day operations of athletics, they have an obligation to ask critical questions to ensure that significant commitments receive appropriate scrutiny and risks are properly mitigated.

Fulfilling this oversight responsibility has become increasingly challenging. To help boards meet this moment, AGB is convening trustees, presidents, chancellors, athletic directors, chief financial officers, foundation leaders, and other industry experts for a timely discussion on the future of intercollegiate athletics and its governance implications.

This meeting, The Governance Challenge in College Athletics: Mission, Finance, and Board Oversight in a New Era, will take place November 10–11 in Washington, DC. Participants will examine the emerging legal, regulatory, and financial risks to institutions in the current athletic landscape—issues that pertain to mission alignment, challenges to traditional financing and business models, multimedia and broadcast rights, revenue sharing, NIL, and other risks.

Jackie Gardina is AGB’s senior director of institution and system programs.

1. Ralph D. Russo, “Nick Saban Lends Support to Senate College Sports Bill Amid SEC, Big Ten Opposition,” The Athletic, June 3, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7329848/2026/06/03/senate-protect-college-sports-act-nick-saban/.
2. Brandon Judd, “Why California’s Governor Spoke out on UCLA’s Move to the Big Ten,” Deseret News, July 15, 2022, https://www.deseret.com/2022/7/15/23220735/why-californias-governor-spoke-out-on-uclas-move-to-the-big-ten-gavin-newsom-uc-regents/.
3. Paolo Uggetti, “UC Regents Approve UCLA’s Big Ten Move, Include Conditions,” ABC News, December 14, 2022, https://abcnews.com/Sports/uc-regents-approve-uclas-big-ten-move-include/story?id=95331447.
4. Josh Moody, “Secretive Big Ten Deal Riles Trustees,” Inside Higher Ed, November 20, 2025, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/trustees-regents/2025/11/20/secretive-big-ten-deal-riles-trustees.
5. Kim Schatzel, “Who Owns College Sports?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 18, 2026, https://www.chronicle.com/article/who-owns-college-sports.