Michael Cross Resigns as Commissioner of the Southern Conference

“It’s All Here.”

That was the slogan that the SoCon adopted under former commissioner Michael Cross in his two-year stint as the league’s leading voice and arbitrator; however, by the time the school he plucked from the OVC/Big South after a 75-year membership—Tennessee Tech—arrived, it was Cross who was no longer here.

On Friday, Aug. 28, Cross stepped down as the acting commissioner of the SoCon and, along with helping usher in a new league member across all sports, Tennessee Tech, to increase the league’s media footprint in the Volunteer State — giving the league a third member from the state of Tennessee, with East Tennessee State and Chattanooga already calling the league home.

The Golden Eagles will kick off their much-anticipated football season at No. 14 in the preseason, but when they kickoff against No. 22 Monmouth on Saturday afternoon, his placard in the newly renovated Tucker Stadium press box will no longer be necessary.

Cross helped usher in a six-year extension of the league’s media rights agreements with ESPN and CBS Sports, as he helped secure those rights through the 2031-32 academic year, as well as making sure the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments don’t leave the city of Asheville anytime soon, securing a 10-year extension in the Altitude City that will expire in 2035.

Not only did that extension make too much sense for the league, with the unprecedented support it has gotten since moving the tournament back to the Harrah’s Cherokee Center in 2012, but it also helped the city of Asheville during a time of economic crisis and need, as a result of both the fallout from COVID-19 pandemic and the sudden devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in late September of 2024. He also helped modernize the SoCon’s logo and branding since officially being announced as the league’s new commissioner on June 1, 2024.

However, there have been several concerns that have come about as of late, mostly concerning the transition of college sports in this new era of NIL, as well as NCAA Tournament expansion. There has also been a well-documented fight for a fifth year for the high school senior class of 2022, which has played out in a very public manner in both state and federal courts over the course of the summer. Cross, who will be remembered for the enhancements he made to the league, will also likely be remembered more for what he said publicly concerning the expansion of the men’s basketball tournament.

Cross issued an interesting statement that struck a chord with many SoCon and mid-major basketball fans throughout the land, and not in a good way, back in April. Essentially, it was a proverbial waving of the white flag to the NCAA, as he laid out reasons that the SoCon should resign themselves to their fate in the play-in round of the NCAA Tournament because it gave the league more of a chance to gain wins in the NCAA Tournament and be given essentially the same unit of revenue to be distributed among the 11 teams for winning a game.

When Davidson made its run to the Elite Eight back in the 2008 edition of March Madness, thanks to former commissioner John Iammarino’s frugality, the league budgeted those units of shared revenue from Davidson’s three tournament wins wisely throughout its membership institutions, leveraging quite an exponential rise at a time before the rise of NIL and the transfer portal when that kind of revenue was hard to come by for a league.

It would be just a decade later when the league had four teams ranked inside the Top 80 of KenPom and the NET; however, despite holding a Top 13 ranking as a league according to KenPom. It remains the highest-ranked league in the history of the NCAA Tournament not to receive two bids, and the SoCon has not had two teams compete in an NCAA Tournament in its 105-year history. If anything, Cross’s ill-timed and weird release helped enhance the NCAA’s position to deny something it has never had to fight to retain, which is automatic qualification to the NCAA Tournament.

With the NCAA being exposed to the power that it doesn’t often have in courtrooms across the country, it would seem like a strange white flag for Cross to raise by surrendering the league’s auto-bid status for a greater opportunity to garner play-in game wins, along with supporting NCAA Tournament expansion. That not only hurts the SoCon but also mid-major basketball in general when such an endorsement is made.

Another issue of late has been the structured decline of the SoCon in the NIL era through scheduling, or lack thereof. Over the past two seasons, the league has struggled to find games with power six conferences, and even at that, the SoCon hasn’t defeated a power program since UNCG defeated No. 14 Arkansas in 2023-24. Most of the losses have been blowouts, and when the SoCon’s champion Furman was relegated to a No. 15 seed last March in the NCAA Tournament, it marked the second straight season the league has seen the SoCon rep on the biggest stage as the second-to-lowest seed line.

Bob Richey BARS

"We're in a system that rewards the best teams in college basketball, scheduling some of the worst teams … to have the highest point margin of victory, so they can increase their efficiency so that their seed line can be better. It's not good for the game." https://t.co/4A17nEECjb

Cross’s statement back in April put the SoCon at an even greater disadvantage. Now the league wouldn’t even be guaranteed a game against one of the best teams in the Field of 68 but now would have to play an extra game and lose more sleep in Dayton or Wichita to turn around and go play a top-eight team in the country less than 48 hours later.

The league can’t improve its status by design of being either bought out of non-conference matchups or just denying the matchup at all, and that didn’t seem to matter to Cross.

Furman and Wofford achieved national rankings during the 2018-19 season, with Wofford claiming an NCAA Tournament win over Seton Hall. A year later, ETSU, which probably should have been ranked at some point during the season, beat LSU by 17 on its home floor a year later en route to an unprecedented 30-win season a year later. The Bucs never got the chance to compete in the NCAA Tournament because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even in bad years, it was rare to see a SoCon team not claim at least one power conference win. However, the league has gone 0-35 the past two seasons against power six, and that was because most of the league’s top teams aren’t getting the opportunity to play those teams because they just aren’t agreeing to schedule them, or there are just far less opportunities and willingness from power six foes that are going to take a risk of losing NET points even if they win the game by a substantial margin.

Perhaps everything came to a head this past off-season when the SoCon organized the SoCon-Big South challenge slated for 2026-27, and the two NCAA Tournament team representatives–Furman and High Point– were scheduled to meet as a part of the challenge, but didn’t get a chance to play because the SoCon didn’t step in and ensure that it was played.

High Point bought out the game with Furman, and the league- aka Cross- did nothing to ensure that it was played. Last season, Austin Peay essentially did the same thing to avoid playing Furman in the SoCon-Atlantic Sun Challenge. It is a league-wide embarrassment for the SoCon to have mid-majors getting bought out by other mid-majors, and for the commissioner not to step in and make sure that doesn’t happen.

Cross could have stepped in on behalf of the league and bought this game to begin with because losing it means losing an opportunity, which is the harsh reality of being a mid-major. At some point, the SoCon won’t be able to keep its top teams if it can ensure that those teams get big game opportunities, especially against other quality mid-major foes, as it not only loses an opportunity for the league collectively, it also keeps it from ever becoming a upper-echelon mid-major like the Missouri Valley of Atlantic 10, which can in fact secure enough of these types of matchups in the non-conference to ensure their NET and KenPom rankings never fall far enough to wear at least two teams aren’t in strong consideration for the NCAA Tournament come selection Sunday. It does happen, but either of those leagues rarely has low seeds or at least two or more teams in consideration for the NCAA Tournament.

If anything, Cross’s statements in the league’s release back in April regarding the direction of men’s basketball and how it should accept the play-in game for an auto-bid qualifier with a smile because of better opportunities to win games ended up being his epitaph as league commissioner. Though I am not certain that it had anything to do with his departure, I am positive that kind of message was not only not well received but likely brought some discussion behind closed doors.

No process has been announced for selecting the next commissioner of the league; however, details for an interim commissioner and the selection process for a new leader of the nation’s fourth-oldest intercollegiate athletic conference will be announced in the coming weeks.