DESTIN, Fla. — The SEC meets Tuesday for its annual spring meetings, and the good news for those involved is that the future football schedule is not the main topic.
The bad news is that the future football schedule is not the main topic.
Whether going to nine conference games or staying at eight now seems quaint compared to the heavy reality that SEC presidents, athletic directors, coaches and commissioner Greg Sankey must face. to be confronted this week: revenue sharing, roster limits, and other outcomes of the regulations in the Case of House v. NCAA.
The SEC presidents voted unanimously – at least in the final vote – to approve the terms of the settlement, which, if approved, will result in approximately 22 percent of annual revenues paid to athletes, starting of next year. This is a historic agreement, and the timing is good for SEC administrators to begin thinking about what happens next in Destin.
Free daily sports updates straight to your inbox. Register
Free daily sports updates straight to your inbox. Register
There are of course other things to do at the conference: Georgia quarterback pursues Florida. Oklahoma And Texas officially join the league in July and their coaches will be in Destin for the first time. Nick Saban no longer coaches football. John Calipari is still coaching basketball but for a different SEC program.
But the state of college athletics, present and future, will be Destin’s main topic. Based on conversations over the past few weeks, here’s what’s on the agenda.
Georgia and Alabama faced off in the SEC Championship Game in December. (John David Mercer / USA Today)
Who receives the money?
The House c. NCAA the regulation leaves this question open. Revenue sharing with athletes will be on an optional basis for each school, but one would expect every SEC school to buy into it, not wanting to be left behind, as long as the money is there. (More on that last part in a moment.)
Questions arise about Title IX and whether it would require equitable income distribution. The regulation leaves this question unresolved. Expect this to be a major problem discussion point between administrators: Do they make an equal distribution between men’s and women’s sports? This would be the simplest approach, and although it would involve giving a lower share to the football players (who generate the most income), they could compensate it through external income linked to the name, image and the resemblance. Talking about that…
GO FURTHER
How college sports leaders coped with talk of a historic settlement
What does this mean for collectives?
Some people would like the settlement to mean they go away. In addition to direct payments to athletes, there has been talk of bringing NIL “in-house” and allowing schools to better control payments and transactions.
But the House rules do not directly address this problem. And always a question of competition, when coaches are trying to acquire the best players, they will want the best means to achieve this, and if they believe that collectives are the best solution at their school, they will not want to give it up.
The question is whether there are still ways to regulate collectives and whether the introduction of NIL “internally” is something that can happen soon.
GO FURTHER
NCAA and Power 5 approve settlement allowing players to be paid directly
Where does the revenue sharing money come from?
Josh Brooks, Georgia athletic director didn’t mince his words when he addressed his school’s athletic council Thursday: “We need to look at ways to increase revenue. » That meant potentially raising ticket prices in Georgia, as well as reducing personnel costs, slowing down facilities spending, basically anything.
There could be a lot of information exchange between athletic directors, and that’s where football scheduling could come into play.
The need for additional revenue appears to be an incentive to keep the current schedule format: Eight conference games means one more non-conference game, and that’s where more money can be made through attendance. Unless ESPN comes up with more money, and waiting that could 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 could be even more money to be made by playing nine games. But there appear to be more programs eager to take advantage of that extra non-conference play.
GO FURTHER
What you need to know about the House vs. NCAA settlement and a historic day for college sports
List Caps
This is shaping up to be a major topic. The settlement calls for an end to scholarship limits, such as 85 for football, 13 for men’s basketball and 11.7 for baseball. In their place will be roster picks – but nothing has been confirmed as to what they will be for which sport and whether the picks will be NCAA-wide or conference-wide.
Football coaches have been concerned for some time that their maximum roster would be 85. Right now, many programs have 120 or more players, generously. use walk-ons for depth and practice players. NFL the teams, for their part, operate with squads of 53 players during the season.
But as one SEC coach recently pointed out Athleticism, NFL teams can sign free agents during the season to replace injured (or ineffective) players. College teams need their players enrolled by the start of the fall semester and cannot recruit new players. So football coaches will push for a higher roster limit or something akin to practice squads.
GO FURTHER
College football’s next big change: Could backups be eliminated?
Basketball coaches don’t seem to be as affected, as long as the number of selections stays around 13 for men’s teams and 15 for women’s teams. Either way, it’s unlikely any team will be able to keep more players on the team in the transfer portal era.
But other sports, especially baseball, could be a free-for-all. If the roster cap remains at the current level of 35, programs that care enough to spend on more players — LSU, Vanderbilt And Mississippi State comes to mind – seems to have a huge advantage.
The opposite is that if schools care enough about a sport to dedicate more to it, they should have that advantage. A school might choose to dedicate its resources to some sports but cut back on others.
The idea behind this is that more scholarships go to more players, but athletic departments are still able to cut costs by not having as many (or any) replacements. This is just one of the big changes wrought by all of this and just in time for the SEC’s power brokers to get together and start to figure out what it all means.
(Top photo by Greg Sankey: Denny Simmons / USA Today)
