SerpApi.Org
As college football tries to navigate an era of chaos sparked by the reckoning from decades of antitrust violations, one of the most powerful conference claims it's serious about leaving the NCAA.
Via Nick Schultz of On3.com, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Monday that his conference could indeed break away and do its own thing.
“You phrased the question, ‘How real?’ So I’ll take that as, like, real or not. So they’re real,” Sankey said. “People have talked about that. They’ve opined about the frustrations that bring them to the point of saying we should look at something significantly different."
Sankey claims he's not simply trying to secure an edge for the SEC in ongoing discussions regarding the future of college football.
“I do not believe that is a leverage point — I think that’s just honest communication," Sankey said. "I would prefer that stay in a meeting room or on a video conference and not be part of the D1 ticker the next morning, but I don’t control all of that.”
Leverage or not (and no leverage is worth a damn if the party exercising admits it's leverage), something has to give. And if the proposed solution harms the biggest conferences, why should they go along with it?
While recent years have seen a revolution in college football, the next phase could be an evolution in which major conferences run their own leagues, perhaps with (in time) a postseason tournament consisting of the best teams in each conference.
With the NCAA losing much of its power, the conferences can fill the void. With so many college football teams, maybe the best solution is to have several different leagues that run their own businesses. The various conferences can then do their own thing. Once the conferences are sorted out, the postseason arrangements will follow.
