NCAA member schools vote to ratify new streamlined constitution

INDIANAPOLIS — NCAA members voted Thursday to ratify a new, streamlined version of the association's constitution.

The motion passed with 80.4% of members voting in favor, putting an expected stamp of approval on the first part of a two-step process to significantly reduce the responsibility of the association's national office and to overhaul rules at all levels of college sports during one of the most tumultuous times in the industry's history. Each of the NCAA's three divisions will now start working on revising or creating their own rules to align with the fundamental principles laid out in the new constitution.

«This needs to be a declaration that we know that now in the coming months we're going to think afresh about college sports,» NCAA president Mark Emmert said shortly before the vote during his annual address at the association's convention.

The new constitution, which was prompted by significant legal and political losses for the NCAA last summer, is designed to simplify what many college sports leaders have called a complex and outdated rulebook. It shrinks the board of governors — the association's decision-making entity — from 20 members down to nine and tries to ensure that current and former athletes have a larger voice in shaping the future NCAA.

The administrators and committee members who crafted the constitution hoped to reaffirm the NCAA's focus on the «primacy of the academic experience» after a summer in which politicians and Supreme Court justices questioned the NCAA's claims that it is unique and distinct from professional sports.

«Are we spending our resources in a way that emphasizes our core values and helping as many students as we can?» Emmert asked during his address Thursday. «That's