It might be an elevator, a hallway or a hall this weekend at one of many Remaining Fours, the lads’s in Arizona or the ladies’s in Cleveland. Greg Sankey, commissioner of the SEC, has a workforce in every, so likely he will likely be at each. Len Perna, in the meantime, has an thought, and if he sees Sankey he might do every part in his energy to get a minute.
At most, Sankey will smile politely, nod and hold the dialog quick. For now, the probabilities of Sankey and his convention wanting any a part of Perna’s thought are about pretty much as good because the SEC giving up soccer as a varsity sport.
As a result of that’s basically what it could be doing right here.
The notion of a school soccer “Tremendous League” has been percolating for some time, and one thought lastly went public on Wednesday, when The Athletic reported that various energy brokers, together with the presidents at Syracuse and West Virginia and Perna, the CEO of TurnkeyZRG, had been pushing for a 70-team everlasting group, using athletes as gamers, making its personal guidelines and leaving non-football sports activities to the present conferences, as is.
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Publicly, the response amongst SEC energy brokers was crickets: Sankey and the presidents at Georgia and Mississippi State, two of probably the most tenured and highly effective SEC college leaders, declined interview requests. Because the story in The Athletic identified, Sankey and others within the SEC have prevented assembly with Perna and others concerned within the effort, known as School Sports activities Tomorrow.
The rationale for the stiff-arming isn’t arduous to determine.
The SEC and the Massive Ten maintain probably the most energy in school soccer proper now. In addition they take advantage of cash. There’s little motive to signal away that energy to a 3rd celebration, and even much less motive to divide that cash with everybody else.
The CST plan would contain the SEC giving up its 16 soccer packages and changing into a part of a 70-member everlasting group. It might additionally contain the SEC, Massive Ten and different energy conferences ceding authority over the School Soccer Playoff to the CST. Good luck with all that.
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Then there are the tv contracts: The SEC is locked in with ESPN via 2034, simply as the opposite conferences even have long-term extensions. The window for this may appear to have handed. It might take everybody prepared to tear up their offers, get collectively and basically begin over.
That half, whereas unlikely, is at the least not completely past the realm of actuality. In case you haven’t observed, issues are fairly wild on the foundations entrance in school sports activities, within the sense that there aren’t many guidelines anymore. That’s as a result of the courts more and more have a look at all NCAA guidelines and say: No, you’ll be able to’t do this. And as many, together with me, have written, it appears to be like an increasing number of like the one manner school sports activities could make and implement even cheap guidelines is to go the employee-union-collective-bargaining route. Perna and his CST group are providing the prospect for the soccer packages to interrupt away, kind their tremendous league, professionalize and make these guidelines on NIL, transferring and different issues. Uninterested in gamers leaping within the portal each semester so as to get a greater NIL deal? Then right here’s your reply, the tremendous league of us argue.
So why wouldn’t the SEC, Massive Ten and others soar at this opportunity? For one, they aren’t giving up on having the ability to make their very own guidelines. Realists aren’t relying on Congress and federal laws anymore. (They by no means ought to have.) However that doesn’t imply the facility conferences can’t devise a strategy to do it themselves, irrespective of how uncomfortable.
That will get again to the facility and management facet of this. Do the SEC and Massive Ten wish to conform to function beneath the umbrella of one other group, or retain as a lot energy and management for themselves as attainable?
Ah, however what in regards to the cash half? What about when the NCAA loses its subsequent case — maybe Home v. NCAA, the class-action lawsuit wherein the group and energy conferences might be on the hook for a billion or extra in damages for athletes who performed earlier than the daybreak of NIL freedoms? What about when income sharing occurs, and faculties should straight pay athletes, costing nevertheless many tens of millions per 12 months out of their budgets?
That’s the place personal fairness is available in, and plenty of throughout the SEC, who converse off the report so as to converse candidly, are very leery. They see PE corporations as coming in and dictating issues, like setting pricing on season tickets, and even non-financial points. Why take cash from a PE agency when you’ll be able to nonetheless get it from a financial institution?
And thus the CST group, even with acquainted faces like Perna concerned, have run right into a brick wall with the SEC — dinners canceled, conferences not taken, calls unreturned. This isn’t taking place anytime quickly, if in any respect.
However it’s additionally not unhealthy that it’s on the market. In reality, it’s progress.
School sports activities is at an inflection level. One thing must be completed, which is why the SEC and Massive Ten in February introduced their partnership to debate “a sustainable future of faculty sports activities.” A variety of the acknowledged goals of Perna’s group are heading in the right direction. It’s going to take inventive, maybe radical options to get school sports activities to that sustainable mannequin that passes muster with the courts.
Too many energy brokers in school sports activities, together with the SEC, had been gradual to comprehend the adjustments coming. There was an excessive amount of resistance and never sufficient inventive pondering on easy methods to transfer ahead. It’s good that somebody is pondering radically, and placing it on the desk.
Sankey has talked about blue-sky pondering, no unhealthy concepts. This is able to be a foul thought for his convention. It’s not an answer. However the extra concepts thrown out, and the extra energy brokers related to them, the nearer we get to actual options. Ones which have an opportunity, and ones that may final.
(Photograph: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Photographs)
