SerpApi.Org
TAMPA, Fla. – Within this waterfront Marriott hotel along an offshoot of Tampa Bay, college football’s biggest media extravaganza unfolds.
In the main grand hallway, where hundreds of press members gather here for SEC football media days, a giant logo portraying the conference’s three iconic letters — S-E-C — serves as the primary visual backdrop.
But adjacent to that display, behind a guarded curtain, the league’s commissioner slumps into a chair as he scrolls through his cell phone during a rare quiet moment amidst the bustle.
“Mmm,” he mutters as he glares at the screen. “More messages from Washington.”
A topic at this year’s event — even among the head football coaches themselves — is ongoing negotiations over a congressional bill to regulate college athletics and, perhaps even more notable, the SEC’s potential plans, without revised federal legislation, to operate within its own silo: a conference-led governance model that’s caused a stir across the country.
In fact, in a sitdown with Yahoo Sports, Greg Sankey says the frustration within his league over the absence of regulation and enforcement will “continue to simmer” and “if we’re not able to deal with issues, then the boil starts.”
Does that mean the SEC intends to execute a full-fledged breakaway from the NCAA umbrella, to remove itself from the College Football Playoff and NCAA championships, to only play itself in the regular season, hold its own postseason tournament and then, if another league’s champion wants to duel, play them in a neutral-site game deemed as the new national championship?
No, Sankey says.
But it does mean that the SEC is exploring a self-governing model to create and then enforce its own rules related to eligibility, transfers and athlete compensation.
However, he’s made clear in a recommendation to university presidents that it is not his preferred course of action. What is? A congressional bill.
While coaches parade across media day here, lawmakers and staff members in Washington, D.C. are continuing intense negotiations over revisions to the Protect College Sports Act in an effort to gain the support of the SEC and Big Ten. In fact, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, on the Hill this week, has been an active, in-person participant in the negotiations with the bill’s co-authors Sens. Ted Cruz, Maria Cantwell and Eric Schmitt. ACC commissioner Jim Phillips was scheduled to be on the Hill on Wednesday too.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark and Sankey, from the enclave at media days, have participated by phone.
Without a bill, the SEC’s conference-led governance model “takes on more interest,” said Sankey. “But that doesn’t mean something is poised to happen.”
“If the headline remains that we’re breaking away, that’s uninformed,” he told Yahoo Sports.
Those with knowledge of negotiations over the Senate bill have expressed renewed confidence in reaching an agreement with the two conferences over supporting the legislation — a key to the bill moving through the Senate, then the House and being signed by the president.
The latest discussions have centered mostly on changes to the revenue-share cap. Lawmakers are discussing the creation of a separate retention pool of money — $25 million in addition to the $21.3 million cap — that schools can use for the sole purpose of retaining athletes currently on their roster.
Cap adjustments are necessary, Sankey told Yahoo Sports, but he’d prefer to see finalized texts before commenting on the retention pool.
A litany of other issues languish as lawmakers and staff members work to reach a compromise on revisions, both between themselves — the Republican Cruz and Democrat Cantwell — and with leaders of the SEC and Big Ten.
For instance, an anti-expansion provision remains a fluid subject that, as of the latest discussions, would cap conference membership at 19 schools and require programs moving from one power conference to another to operate as an independent for five years. Such a move may expedite another wave of conference expansion as schools jockey to elevate themselves — such as ACC programs moving to the Big Ten or SEC — before the bill passes.
Lawmakers are expected to add to the legislation a provision that prohibits third-party entities, such as private equity firms, from creating a super league by poaching the top 20-30 brands in the country in a move to generate millions more in revenue. It was a request from the Big Ten and SEC.
Asked why he’s so concerned about such entities forming a super league, Sankey told Yahoo Sports, “Because that’s what their proposals contemplate. You can define it however you want to, but my view is, whether it’s 20, 30, 70, 130 [schools], you are really creating a super league. There’s no assurance that once that project is down the road and it can't generate the income it’s promised for 130, that they don’t scale back to something very different.”
Sankey often refers to the SEC as its own “super league.” And many within his conference believe that the SEC should not only govern itself but only compete against itself — a model spearheaded publicly by Georgia president Jere Morehead.
“l think we’d want to play with the schools following the rules,” Morehead told Yahoo Sports earlier this year.
A conference-only governance model is rife with its own problems, let alone the revolutionary action of competitively leaving everyone behind. Sankey holds a background in college compliance and said a league enforcing its own rules would be “very” difficult. It’s why many conferences, including the SEC, abandoned such a structure years ago and instead granted the NCAA control over regulation and enforcement.
When he joined the SEC, Sankey told then-commissioner Mike Slive that he did not want the role of “head of enforcement” because of the difficulties associated with the league penalizing its own member schools.
And what about a competitive breakaway? Starting your own playoff? Playing only yourself?
The ideas have been discussed among administrators as a “Plan B” if federal legislation doesn’t pass. But, Sankey said, the plan may lead to political problems with the same entity, Congress, that officials are lobbying for assistance.
“It doesn’t take much imagination to say we’re going to leave [competitively] and you’re in congressional hearings [answering for it]. I think that’s unwise.”
