Could the SEC actually govern itself? With college sports in dire straits, more options are on the table
MIRAMAR BEACH — As she exited the Sandestin Hilton here after the SEC’s annual spring administrative meetings, Donde Plowman, the Tennessee chancellor and chair of the league’s presidential board, had something on her mind.“Do you know how many firms on the Fortune 500 list were on that list 25 years ago?” she asked aloud. “It’s about 20%. Most organizations would rather die than change and most do die. I’m not saying we are dying. But we must change.”The SEC’s presidents and chancellors did not take action on any items this week. There was no vote on a future governance model, no decision on the long-discussed split from the NCAA or a creation of their own rules and enforcement.However, there are signs here that something drastic is afoot.For the first time since 2003, the league capped off spring meetings without a “business session,” where presidents normally adopt bylaw changes — an indication that the conference is possibly on its way to something grander this summer. Commissioner Greg Sankey offered subtle suggestions of impending decisions, telling reporters to “stay tuned.”And perhaps most notably, the league presented to its presidents and chancellors several future governance models on Wednesday during a closed-door session with the commissioner and conference staff, including — in a landmark moment — a collective bargaining framework.Though any bargaining model still seems a distant possibility — maybe years away? — the league’s willingness to explore such a revolutionary change is a notable move, especially this particular model, which included an infusion from private capital. It speaks to the frustrating landscape, as detailed in a story at Yahoo Sports on Tuesday, in which the conference finds itself: little regulation and enforcement on athlete movement and compensation.According to league leaders, the path is clear.If Plan A is congressional help — a Senate bill was released on Wednesday, though some of its contents are at odds with the league’s thinking — Plan B appears to be a conference-only governance model addressing several elements.The SEC is planning to go its own way, perhaps not yet for competition, but for rule-making and possibly enforcement, too.It is no longer just a threat, Plowman told Yahoo Sports on Thursday.“The first thing we start with is governing ourselves and not worry about what other leagues are doing and establish what we think is right,” she said. “I’m not afraid to look at collective bargaining. If we don’t get help from Congress, that will be out there.”The SEC could go its own way with a new governance model in the future. Maria Lysaker via Getty ImagesUniversity presidents and chancellors held what Mississippi State president Mark Keenum described as “healthy discussions” this week. The league’s executives “empowered” Sankey to return with more information on the modeling presented to presidents.Presidents are then expected to provide the conference with recommendations on the future by “mid-summer,” Keenum told Yahoo Sports.There exists an “urgency,” Plowman said, to implement anything before January’s football portal, when movement and compensation rates likely balloon even more.University presidents who spoke to Yahoo Sports declined to reveal details of the different governance models they were shown, but the paths seem clear: (1) self-governance while remaining within the NCAA umbrella and competing for national championships; (2) separating completely from the association, its rules and its championships; (3) and/or implementing an athlete bargaining structure from the conference level or through an outside third party (the most complicated option).Nothing appears off the proverbial table.The bill that was announced on Wednesday from Sens. Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell provides many concepts that the league is presumably discussing creating internally in a self-governance model: a one-time transfer, five-year eligibility and ban on pro players; tampering and agent regulations; and stricter athlete compensation enforcement.But leaders are exhausted of waiting on Congress, they say. While a Senate hearing on the bill looms next Wednesday on Capitol Hill, the SEC is moving forward with its “Plan B.”“We owe it to ourselves to pursue another parallel path and that path should include collective bargaining,” said Oklahoma athletic director Roger Denny, one of the most outspoken leaders on change.“Plan B is going to have to be Plan A and no Plan B is devoid of collective bargaining,” said another university president.Reform the CSC or go it alone?But first, as Plowman said, the league is marching down a path of creating and enforcing its own rules while still — at least for now — intending to make reforms to the College Sports Commission, the enforcement entity where millions in submitted NIL cash goes unapproved. Executives are debating reform ideas, such as exempting a portion of the deals under review if they are within a certain scope of the CSC’s range-of-compensation metric, as well as increasing the de minimis threshold from $2,500 to a larger figure like $10,000 (ie: deals of $10,000 or less would get immediately approved).More long-term reforms are expected later, such as discussions related to increasing the revenue-share cap, adding a luxury cap for over-spenders and key changes to the associated entity definition — the latter of which may be determined soon by a judge (there is a June 10 hearing over the matter).“We’ve got to abide by the rules we set. We are committed to doing that. That’s the first thing,” said Plowman, who is on the CSC’s eight-member board, along with a university president from each of the power leagues and their corresponding commissioner. “Now that we are on the board … we will be part of the rule-making. I want to help [CSC CEO] Bryan Seeley be successful.“Let the CSC do its business,” she continued. “If they say a deal doesn’t go, it doesn’t go or you go to arbitration and then you accept the outcome. If we need to give CSC feedback and amend this process, we can.”Seeley is open to change and wants to “enforce the rules that people want enforced.” The hangup is gaining consensus among the conferences in reforms, something that Seeley is “helping facilitate,” he said.For some, the CSC situation is dire. More than $100 million promised to athletes, much of it from the SEC and Big Ten, is held up in the system.“Schools that are not able to get a lot of their deals through right now in NIL Go [clearinghouse], are upset about that,” Seeley told reporters here earlier this week. “They think their deals should go through and we’re not enforcing the rules correctly with respect to them. One thing I will say is we are enforcing the rules consistently in NIL Go.”Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin says the CSC and Seeley are “trying to do what’s asked of them,” which he called a “herculean task.”“If the CSC is going to be successful, it’s probably going to take three to four years,” he said.And what of the deals held up in the system?“It’s almost like this market was set and then the CSC appeared,” Stricklin said. “I don’t know how you put that back without disenfranchising kids.”The SEC, as well as any one of the other power conferences, can make changes to the revenue-share cap if they submit such a request to the House settlement plaintiff attorneys, co-lead attorney Jeffrey Kessler told Yahoo Sports. But if such a request holds consensus among all conferences, the request has a better chance of approval from the settlement’s magistrate judge, he said.Any conference-only governance model may include a higher cap while also offering the league the ability to set rules and evade legal challenges considering its smaller membership group (from 350-plus in NCAA Division I to 16 in the SEC).However, self-governance is a lengthy process, Stricklin said, and if national competition ends, that’s “a line you are crossing for which there is no return.”Does the SEC support the new Senate bill?As for the Senate bill, Sankey declined to take a public position on the 111-page legislation — does the SEC support it or not? — but he responded to the bill’s language that some believe targets his conference and the Big Ten in certain ways (prohibiting a merger, expansion and the pooling media rights concept)."If someone chooses to write legislation that focuses on us because we’ve done things so well, I look forward to learning that explanation,” he said.Before his news conference here, the league distributed to reporters a one-page statement from university presidents reaffirming their position against the consolidation of media rights — an optional concept included in the Senate bill.“Those who advocate [for pooling rights] have represented things to me about how revenue would be distributed generally,” Sankey said, “and I think they have no idea how hard those conversations would be. No idea.”What may be just as difficult: implementing a self-governance system, enforcing your own rules and, perhaps eventually, limiting who you play.“l think we’d want to play with the schools following the rules,” Georgia president Jere Morehead told Yahoo Sports in January in a story that first publicized the SEC’s serious conference-only governance efforts in the absence of national enforcement.So, what’s next?“Stay tuned,” Sankey said.The room of reporters stared at him unsatisfied with such an answer.“Why would I announce what might happen when it hasn’t happened?” Sankey responded. “What happens next will happen next. It hasn’t happened now.”
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