Greg Sankey would ‘welcome’ a national standard for college sports

DESTIN, Fla. — SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey laid out in broad terms Monday night what Congress’ aid to college sports could look like, saying they are “a national system that deserves national standards.”

In his keynote address at the SEC annual meetings, Sankey outlined what college sports could look like following a deal between the Power 5 conferences and the NCAA to settle three antitrust cases.

As the terms of the deal came together in recent weeks, college sports officials cautioned that it should not be seen as a silver bullet to problems – legal and otherwise – in college sports, but rather as the beginning of a new era. where schools share revenue with athletes.

“I believe Congress still has an opportunity to use the structure of this agreement to pass legislation to strengthen the future of college sports,” Sankey said.

Sankey said he has already been to Washington, D.C., at least five times this year. He added that as he enters his 10th year as SEC commissioner, one big change is the number of members of Congress on his phone. He described the effort evolving from “curiosity” to “a little interest” and that education on what is needed would be “continuous repetition.”

“I would be happy to act between now and the election,” Sankey said. “Most people I talk to say it’s unlikely, and so your educational process will continue after the election, and it will depend on who leads each party in the House and Senate, where the majorities are, and who occupies the White House. These realities guide the conversations.

“So even though it’s been unpredictable, I think it always will be.”

Any congressional action would likely include elements of nationalizing the rules and avoid the current patchwork of state laws. Some, but not all, of this ambiguity should be alleviated by the regulations. But Sankey stressed that employment remains a thorny issue and that, traditionally, a group must have employee status to bargain collectively.

“The scale of the regulation is intended to give us a way forward, to provide a level of clarity about the future that does not automatically incorporate employment,” he said.

Sankey said no student came up to him and told him they wanted to “be (imposed) as a lawyer.”

“There are those who defend this reality,” he added. “It brings me back to a fundamental statement, which is that there is no better time to be a student-athlete than right now in the history of college sports. And again, they don’t call me and say, ‘I want to be an employee.'”

NCAA President Charlie Baker, a former governor of Massachusetts, has visited Washington regularly to try to build momentum for a bill. There have been nearly a dozen hearings on college sports in recent years and more than a half-dozen bills drafted, but few tangible results.

“Obviously, we’re in an election year,” Sankey said. “Congress is a difficult place to get work done, and I say that respectfully; there is a lot of work ahead for members of the House and Senate.”

Sankey also addressed a number of other issues that will loom over the SEC meetings, including how the conference will address the distribution of settlement revenue while complying with Title IX. Sankey pointed out that the SEC won four national championships this year, all in women’s sports. He said the league had to “fight against this new play.”

“Our tendency has been to provide some equity,” he said. “It’s a very different world. I expect we’ll get opinions, points of view, and we have time to get to know those points of view – and then we’ll have to figure out what that means from a decision.

The agreement with the NCAA also sparked speculation about capping the size of a team’s roster under the new business model, a possibility that has caused consternation among some football coaches because a limit of 85 players would likely eliminate the backup positions. But Sankey said he told coaches individually, “Hey, slow down, guys. »

“I know other conferences have discussed it,” he said. “The coaches have been texting our coaches. They’re excited and we’ve told them to wait. We’re going to have a conversation. That’s where it is: a concept. Understand that football captures attention, but we have 21 championship sports, all of which need to have some level of conversation about this list item.”

Sankey also said there “should be changes” in how the NCAA enforces its rules — and how schools are asked to follow them. Once the terms of the settlement are finalized, Sankey said he expects the league to review state laws because they are all written differently.

“There are a few options,” he said. “There’s some openness about what that might look like. I’m not going to restrict that.”

In addition to the important topics surrounding the NCAA rulemaking, Sankey addressed a wide range of issues that the league will also discuss this week, including player availability reporting. This is a project some staff members have been working on since last summer, but Sankey said no decisions are expected this week.

“We don’t want to rush into anything,” he said. “It’s not about injury reporting. It’s a very different circumstance given some of the privacy issues that we have. Yet when you start to see the number of dollars being wagered on legalized sports betting around sports Academics – not just football, but men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, baseball – all of these grab your attention.

“We need to think about how information is managed.”

ESPN’s Dan Murphy contributed to this report.