The Commissioner's Playbook: What Every Sports Parent Gets Wrong About College Athletics
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Episode Summary
In Episode 6 of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with Dr. Bob Dranoff — former commissioner of the East Coast Conference in Division II, former athletic director at multiple levels of college athletics including Division I, Division II, Division III, and junior college, and current professor at St. John's University and St. Joseph's College. Bob reached out to Todd on LinkedIn the day Valiant Sports Society launched, and Todd knew from their very first conversation that this was a voice parents needed to hear. Few people alive have seen college athletics from as many angles — and fewer still have also sat in the stands as a sports parent, watching their own daughters navigate the same system they spent a career running.
Bob and his wife Anne raised two daughters, Alex and Catherine, on Long Island. Both played field hockey and ran track. Alex went on to play collegiate field hockey at Adelphi University and now works as an associate athletic director at a Division II school. Catherine became a school social worker and coached field hockey at the middle school level. Bob is candid about what kind of sports parent he was: not particularly strategic, not running a deliberate household sports culture, mostly just hoping his kids were happy and involved. What he did have was a front-row seat to the dysfunction — the parents who cornered him on the sideline to complain about officiating in a sport he openly admits he never understood, the inequities in facilities and resources for girls' programs, the slow creep of pressure that follows kids from youth sports into high school and beyond. He eventually started drifting to the other side of the field just to get away from the noise.
I slowly moved around to the other side of the field just to get away from parents. They would complain to me about the officiating, and I would say: I have a background in athletics — I don't get this game. So there's no way you're going to get this game.
The conversation moves quickly into the landscape of college athletics — NIL, the transfer portal, the professionalization of what used to be called amateur sports, and what all of it actually means for the families sitting in the stands at a club tournament watching a Division I coach walk the sideline. Bob's answer is measured but direct: the majority of college athletes will never see meaningful NIL money. The average payout, by most estimates, is a few hundred dollars. The Arch Mannings of the world are statistical outliers so rare they distort the entire conversation. What parents need to understand is that the carrot being dangled — D1 scholarship, NIL earnings, professional career — applies to a vanishingly small number of athletes, and the youth sports industry has a financial interest in making every family believe their child is the exception.
The majority of student athletes playing collegiately won't see NIL money. Most of them are playing sports because they love sports, and it's giving them an opportunity to go to a school they want and get a degree and move forward.
Bob spent twelve years as a Division II athletic director and sixteen as a Division II conference commissioner. He makes the case for Division II with the clarity of someone who has lived it from the inside: the philosophy is balance. Student athletes at the Division II level can do a semester abroad without penalty. They can student-teach during the season. They can be in a play, run for student government, build a life outside their sport. At the Division I level — particularly in the power conferences — that is increasingly difficult. The time commitment is a year-round job, and the academic piece, Bob says with some concern, is no longer the priority it once was for coaches, administrators, or in many cases the athletes themselves.
If you're an education major and you need to do your student teaching during the season — how do you handle that at a Division I level where there's such a large commitment? At Division II, our policy was: you should go do it. There won't be any penalty.
The transfer portal section of the conversation is one of the most practically useful for parents. Bob's argument is counterintuitive but well-supported: the best entry point for most high school athletes today is not Division I. The transfer portal has flooded Division I rosters with experienced players, shrinking the available spots for incoming freshmen. A student athlete who enters Division II, develops, earns playing time, and builds a track record now has a legitimate pathway into Division I through the portal — on their own terms, with leverage, rather than arriving as a freshman competing against upperclassmen for a roster spot they may never get. Bob adds a caution: constant movement through the portal is academically damaging, and families should weigh that cost honestly.
The episode closes on mental health — a subject Bob says he cannot separate from the larger conversation about what college athletics has become. He watched it change over his career: more awareness, more resources, more willingness to name the problem. But he also watched the pressure pipeline from youth sports deliver athletes to college campuses already carrying anxiety, burnout, and identity fragility that no counseling center can fully address after the fact. His message to parents is the same one that runs through every episode of Be Valiant: the stress starts earlier than you think, it compounds quietly, and by the time it surfaces in a college athletic department, the window for easy intervention has long since closed.
Not listening. Not thinking about what's best for the student. That's the most common mistake parents make in the recruiting process.
Todd closes by asking Bob what one word he would use to describe Division II athletics. Bob's answer is immediate: balance. It is the word that defines his entire philosophy — about college sports, about parenting, about what the youth sports journey is actually supposed to be for.
Top 5 Takeaways
The D1 carrot is a sales tool, not a plan. Youth sports organizations and club coaches have a financial interest in keeping families chasing Division I. The reality is that the number of athletes who play D1 is small, the number who earn meaningful NIL money is smaller still, and the number who go on to professional careers is statistically negligible. Parents who build their entire youth sports strategy around a D1 outcome are optimizing for an outcome that will not materialize for the vast majority of kids — and paying an enormous financial and emotional price along the way.
Division II is not a consolation prize — it is a philosophy. Bob spent nearly three decades in Division II and describes its defining characteristic as balance: the belief that a student athlete should be able to study abroad, student-teach during a season, join a club, be in a play, and build a full college life without penalty. At the Division I level, particularly in power conferences, that balance is increasingly gone. Parents evaluating college programs should ask not just what level their child can play at, but what kind of college experience they actually want their child to have.
The transfer portal changes the optimal entry strategy. Division I rosters are now heavily stocked with experienced transfer portal players, leaving fewer spots for incoming freshmen. A student athlete who enters Division II, earns playing time, develops, and builds a track record now has a legitimate pathway into Division I through the portal — with leverage and a body of work behind them. For many athletes, this is a smarter path than arriving at a D1 program as a freshman competing for a spot they may never get.
A partial scholarship is not what most parents think it is. Bob spent years watching families choose a school offering a smaller athletic scholarship over a Division II program offering significantly more financial aid — because the smaller scholarship came with a D1 logo. A scholarship for books is still called a scholarship. Parents need to do the actual math: total cost of attendance minus total aid, at every school on the list, at every division level. The number that matters is what you pay, not what the offer sounds like.
The mental health pipeline runs from youth sports into college athletics. Bob watched it over his entire career: athletes arriving at college campuses already carrying anxiety, burnout, and identity fragility built up over years of pressure in youth sports. The counseling resources are better than they have ever been, but they are downstream interventions. The stress starts in youth sports, compounds through high school, and surfaces in college. Parents who want to protect their child's mental health in college need to start making different decisions in youth sports — now.
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