DESTIN, Fla. — The SEC convenes Tuesday for its annual spring meetings, and the good news for those involved is the future football schedule is not the main topic.
The bad news is the future football schedule is not the main topic.
Whether to go to nine conference games or stay at eight seems quaint now compared with the heavy reality that SEC presidents, athletic directors, coaches and commissioner Greg Sankey must confront this week: revenue sharing, roster limits and other results of the settlement in the House v. NCAA case.
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SEC presidents voted unanimously — at least in the final vote it was unanimous — to approve the settlement terms, which if approved will result in around 22 percent of annual revenue being paid to athletes, starting next year. It’s a landmark agreement, and the timing is good for SEC administrators, who can start to hash out what comes next in Destin.
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There are, of course, other things going in the conference: A quarterback at Georgia is suing Florida. Oklahoma and Texas officially join the league in July, and their coaches will be present in Destin for the first time. Nick Saban is no longer coaching football. John Calipari is still coaching basketball but for a different SEC program.
But the state of college athletics, present and future, will be the main topic in Destin. Based on conversations during the past few weeks, here’s what is on the agenda.
Who gets the money?
The House v. NCAA settlement leaves this open-ended. Revenue sharing with athletes will be on an opt-in basis for every school, but one would expect every SEC school will opt in, not wanting to be left behind, as long as the money is there. (More on that last part in a moment.)
There are questions about Title IX and whether it would require an even distribution of the revenue. The settlement leaves that unresolved. Expect that to be a major discussion point among administrators: Do they do an even split between men’s and women’s sports? That would be the easy approach, and though it would mean giving football players (who generate the most revenue) a lower share, they could make it up via outside name, image and likeness earnings. Speaking of which …
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What does this mean for collectives?
Some people would love for the settlement to mean they go away. In addition to the direct payments to athletes, there has been talk about bringing NIL “in-house” and allowing schools more control over payments and deals.
But the House settlement doesn’t directly address that. And this still being about competition, when coaches are trying to acquire the best players, they will want the best means to do that, and if they believe collectives are the best way at their school, they won’t want to give that up.
The question is whether there are still ways to regulate the collectives and whether bringing NIL “in-house” is something that can happen soon.
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Where does revenue-sharing money come from?
Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks didn’t mince words when speaking to his school’s athletic board Thursday: “We have to look at ways to raise revenue.” That meant potentially raising ticket prices at Georgia, as well as staff cost-cutting, slowing down on facilities spending, basically anything.
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There could be a lot of trading of information among athletic directors, and this is where football scheduling could come in.
The need for more revenue would seem to incentivize keeping the current schedule format: Eight conference games mean one more nonconference game, and that’s where more money can be made via attendance. Unless ESPN comes through with more money, and waiting for that might take a while.
Of course, not going to nine games means not having several well-attended, well-watched games on an annual basis: Texas-Texas A&M, Alabama–Tennessee, Auburn–Georgia, etc. So there still could be more money to come from going to nine games. But there appear to be more programs eager to get the bank from that extra nonconference game.
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Roster caps
This sets up to be a major topic. The settlement calls for the end of scholarship limits, such as 85 for football, 13 for men’s basketball and 11.7 for baseball. In their place will be roster caps — but nothing has been confirmed about what those will be for which sport and whether the caps will be NCAA-wide or conference-wide.
Football coaches have been concerned for some time their roster cap will be 85. Right now, many programs have 120 or more players, liberally using walk-ons for depth and practice players. NFL teams, meanwhile, operate with 53-man rosters during the season.
But as one SEC coach pointed out recently to The Athletic, NFL teams can sign free agents during the season to replace injured (or ineffective) players. College teams need their players enrolled when the fall semester starts and can’t bring in new players. So football coaches will push for the roster limit to be higher or for something akin to practice squads.
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Basketball coaches wouldn’t seem to be as affected, as long as the roster caps stay around 13 for men’s teams and 15 for women’s teams. It’s not likely a team can keep more players on the team in the transfer portal era anyway.
But the other sports, especially baseball, might be a free-for-all. If the roster cap stays at the current 35, programs that care enough to spend for more players — LSU, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State come to mind — would seem to have a huge advantage.
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The counter is that if schools care enough about a sport to spend more on it, they should have that advantage. A school could choose to spend its resources on certain sports but scale back on others.
The idea behind it is more scholarship money going to more players but athletic departments still being able to cut costs by not having as many (or any) walk-ons. It’s just one of the big changes wrought by all this and just in time for the SEC power brokers to convene and start figuring out what it all means.
(Top photo of Greg Sankey: Denny Simmons / USA Today)
