The governing bodies in college athletics are desperately trying to wrestle back power from the previously unchecked earning potential of the players. The tug-of-war is a negotiation between college sports leaders and plaintiff attorneys over one of the most significant pieces of the House settlement, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey wasn’t afraid to put his weight behind the defendants on Wednesday at SEC Media Days.
Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports revealed in a report that last week, House plaintiff attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman sent a letter to the NCAA and conference accusing them, to quote Dellenger’s piece, “violating terms of the settlement by denying certain NIL collective contracts they believe should be permissible.”
That letter was sent after the newly formed College Sports Commission, the enforcement branch tasked with preventing impermissible NIL deals under the new revenue-sharing rules established by the House settlement, denied dozens of NIL deals that were deemed not to be for a valid business purpose.
Many of those deals that were denied came from school-based NIL collectives, which were established to bring NIL spending in-house in the early years of the Wild West NIL era (which may not be over). Some of those collectives disbanded as the House settlement allowed schools to pay athletes directly under a $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap for the first year of the agreement. However, others remain intact to spend outside of the revenue-sharing cap with “third-party” NIL deals.
As much as it's a question of payment for players, it’s also a question of power in the new structure of college sports, and Sankey would like to hold as much of it as possible. It appears that he and the other Power Conference commissioners are threatened by the growing power of the athletes and the influence of deep-pocketed outsiders who fund these NIL collectives.
“For how long have people been begging for guardrails?” Sankey asked in an interview with Dellenger at SEC media days. “Well, now we have guardrails. Those broadly across the country that claim they wanted guardrails need to operate within the guardrails. If you allow what’s happened to continue to escalate, there would be a very small number of programs that would be competitive with each other and we’d not have a national sport or a national championship.”
Though Sankey might be working against his own interest because that very small number of programs would almost certainly have a significant concentration in the SEC.
The Big Ten has won the last two national championships, but the SEC has built some of the most robust NIL collectives. With programs like Texas, Texas A&M, and Tennessee leading the way for the conference. If programs are able to spend on their roster above the revenue-sharing cap, it will further separate the Big Ten and SEC from the rest of the pack, aside from outliers like Texas Tech and Miami.
Sankey has to be in lockstep with other college sports leaders desperate for “guard rails” in an era of unchecked spending, so it’s no surprise that he’s taken that stance. Still, it’s not clear if more oversight is a good thing for his league writ large.