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Greg Sankey took the stage Monday at SEC Media Days in Tampa, Florida, and did much more than simply provide quotes for puff pieces about the conference.
Instead, the commissioner communicated in a commendably eloquent but clear manner that the SEC is not happy with the NCAA and that a breakaway from the NCAA, however far-fetched it may seem, is a possibility.
“Over and over our student-athletes tell us the same thing: when they line up for kickoff, tip off in a basketball game, first pitch in the spring, or when they put their feet in the starting blocks at a track meet, they want to know that every competitor from other teams, from different campuses across different states, that those competitors are being held to the same standards that apply to them,” Sankey said. “Among all the press releases, legislative drafts, committee hearings, and political commentary, that message from our student-athletes to me is the clearest message we have heard. Hold everyone to the same standard.”
The SEC’s frustrations over NIL, a new five-year eligibility rule for college athletes and the Protect College Sports Act have driven the conference close enough to a boiling point; one that has become hot enough for Sankey to address rumors of a potential breakaway from the NCAA by the conference.
Sankey doesn’t deny talks of breakaway from NCAA
“They’re real,” Sankey said. “People have talked about that. They’ve opined about the frustrations that bring them to the point of saying we should look at something significantly different. What I think is important is those comments represent a high level of frustration with the circumstance in which we find ourselves. We have regulated ourselves more progressively than other colleagues by choice, across our league. We’ve had different academic eligibility restrictions in the past. So we have different transfer restrictions in the past.
“We went through a College Football Playoff discussion for years and introduced a 12-team Playoff where it just sat because colleagues couldn’t move. They had reasons, but those reasons really didn’t resonate.So understand that beneath the observation is frustration. But I also know the pride with which I spoke of 13 national championships, and there is meaning and value and I do think a national expectation that we participate in a national organization. But that national organization must function in a healthy manner; otherwise, that simmering will continue.”
The SEC has long promoted itself as the leading conference in college athletics, and understandably so at times, given its intrinsic value to the region it encompasses and the success it’s had in every sport, especially football.
But while the NCAA may appear at times as an inconsistent, bumbling and incredibly frustrating organization, it is still the hand that feeds college athletics, including the SEC.
The SEC clearly has a stranglehold on the South. Whether that can be said for the rest of the country is a stretch at best and will be tested if talks of a split with the NCAA become anything more.
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