They gathered here, leaders of the two most powerful conferences in college sports, and talked about the future. There was a newfound optimism that they were starting to wrangle all the changes in college athletics to figure things out.
“We’ve got a chance to hopefully build a new model here and get it right,” Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter said.
And yet they didn’t, by all accounts, talk about the real solution. They didn’t seem to talk about what is the one core problem and the way to solve it. This meeting of the SEC and Big Ten commissioners and athletic directors was conducted a block away from a casino, and the way they’re approaching the future, whether they realize it or not, is a giant gamble.
There is only one serious, overarching issue that negatively impacts everyone, from teams to coaches to fans to players: unlimited transfers. And there is one sure way to get back to a sensible system: collective bargaining with some entity that represents athletes. It may not have to be a union, per se, and the players may not have to be officially employees. Just some entity that negotiates rules that may not be great for both sides but have enough give and take to benefit the overall sport.
And, more importantly, hold up in court.
Instead, everyone involved is going in the opposite direction. They’re pushing for federal legislation that they think will protect them. They’re banking on the coming finalization of the NCAA vs. House settlement, which will bring revenue sharing with athletes but also ways they think they can combat out-of-control payments for name, image, and likeness. They’re exchanging ideas on creative ways to discourage players from leveraging the portal every year – sometimes twice a year – whether it with contract clauses or going from two to one transfer windows.
The actual transfer rules, the ability to leave at any time and not sit a season, are no longer a discussion point, having been ravaged by the courts.
“We’re pretty clearly not going to be back to where things were before, and that’s period,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said. “We’ve said that. I’ve said that to the coaches. Now that doesn’t mean that that results in a warm embrace.”
So the discussion is about working on the margins, essentially, rather than an overall fix. Or they see that fix – employment and collective bargaining – as a bigger problem than unlimited transferring. That’s misguided.
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