What the NCAA Transformation Committee Recommendations Mean

Big changes are happening in college sports programs as a result of the NCAA Transformation Committee recommendations report presented in January. Is your school ready?

3 Things to Know About the NCAA Transformation Committee Recommendations

With a prominent focus on student-athlete health and safety, the recommendations represent what many feel are long overdue modernizations to the NCAA, which was founded in 1906 to regulate college sports rules and protect young athletes.

Along with the ability to earn NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) revenue that commenced in 2021, these recommendations, once implemented, will go a long way to provide more support for the mental, physical, and academic well-being of student-athletes.

All of the NCAA committee’s recommendations were endorsed at the annual NCAA conference in January and referred to committees for further development with a goal of implementation of many of the objectives by August of this year with some targeted for full implementation by August of 2024. While recommendations also covered subjects such as expanding postseason tournaments and brackets and adjusting how revenue is distributed among schools, the NCAA health care benefits recommendations received a top focus and include:

1. Purchasing insurance for student-athletes. Although many schools have started doing this, the NCAA hasn’t implicitly stated this is permissible. While health insurance is one type of insurance member institutions may purchase, several additional types of insurance may also be purchased for student-athletes including: dental, vision, prescription drug, short- and long-term disability, and loss-of-value.
2. Providing full-time access to mental health professionals. According to our 2022 survey on collegiate athletic department medical expense and insurance, mental health benefits were the biggest gap in student-athletes’ health insurance. This recommendation recognizes the physical, academic, and mental stress student-athletes face daily.
3. Providing medical coverage for athletic-related injuries for up to two years following graduation or post-athletic experience. This is important given the long-range impact some injuries have on a student-athlete’s health, performance, and career potential, especially when the injury may sideline the student-athlete for good.

Finding a College Sports Insurance Partner to Help Meet The Transformation Committee Recommendations

A-G Administrators are sports insurance specialists with more than 40 years of experience providing schools like yours with the solutions they need for accident insurance and risk management. By offering our plans, you can help ensure that families and injured student-athletes are not hit with out-of-pocket expenses.

Secondary Injury or Excess Accident Injury Insurance

This plan ensures student-athletes have no gap in their personal coverage before reaching catastrophic plan insurance deductible —$25,000, $35,000, or $50,000 for the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA), $35,000 for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes (NAIA), or $90,000 for the NCAA. The coverage offers:

• Fully insured, per claim, and aggregate deductible options
• Benefit periods of one, two, or three years and beyond
• Expanded coverage for overuse, repetitive stress, and overexertion injuries
• Expanded coverage for heart and circulatory issues, and more

Catastrophic Injury Insurance

This plan works together with the NCAA, NAIA, and NJCAA’s requirements. The NCAA catastrophic insurance plan carries a $90,000 deductible, while the NJCAA’s plans could have a $25,000, $35,000, or $50,000 deductible and the NAIA’s plan has a $35,000 deductible. A-G’s programs carry benefits that can include:

• Five-year or 10-year benefit periods
• Catastrophic maximums from $1 million to $10 million
• Flexible deductible options
• Benefits for total and partial disability and more

Participant Injury Insurance

This coverage is for injuries that occur at officially sponsored activities hosted by your program. It can be tailored to meet your needs and may include:

• Fully insured, per claim, and aggregate deductible options
• One-, two-, or three-year benefit periods
• Coverage for travel to and from officially sanctioned events and more

At A-G, we’re also excited about another new way that we can help schools and student-athletes meet the new NCAA committee recommendations.

Introducing our 24-Hour Student AD&D Coverage

This new coverage provides an industry-leading combination of benefits for:

• Accidental Death
• Accidental Dismemberment
• Paralysis
• Crisis Management Expenses with your own choice of how to use them, such as:
  • Counseling for 10 close friends of a student who committed suicide
  • Counseling & medical expenses for a student who witnessed or was hurt in a violent act
  • Expense for parents or immediate family members, including travel, housing, and meals

This coverage lets you make sure your student-athletes have access to important mental health-related benefits while it also helps address other expensive gaps student-athletes and their families may come across in the event of an accident.

A-G Can Also Help You Manage Risk

We routinely work with our school programs to lower claims costs and recognize training risks. This will be very important moving forward to meet the NCAA’s recommended concussion protocols. And our detailed reports, along with EGBAR, our industry-leading claims management system, can also support any new information you may need to provide on how you are supporting holistic student health and safety in the future.

If you’d like to find out more about how A-G can help your program and your student-athletes, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Just request a no-obligation quote, and we can develop a personal recommendation for your program and student-athletes. We look forward to discussing the upcoming NCAA changes and how you can be ready for them NOW.