If the SEC Goes its Own Way Athletes Pay the Price
OPENING STATEMENTS
There’s been no shortage of noise about the future of college sports in the last week. Summits, roundtables, potential executive orders, senators discovering the transfer portal for the first time. Plenty of cameras, not much consensus, and even less willingness to make real change - not just the change that hurts student-athletes. But one thread is worth taking seriously: what SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is saying out loud. If you are a college athlete - in any sport, at almost any level - you should be paying attention. Sankey went on national platforms and made clear that if the conference cannot get agreement on eligibility, NIL, and transfer rules, the SEC is prepared to go its own way. He described the tipping point for such a move as undefined, which is another way of saying: the option is very much on the table. And while those interviews were airing, SEC presidents and chancellors were preparing to gather in Nashville with this as one of the key topics.
We need to stop treating those comments as talk-radio fodder and start treating them as what they are: the opening moves in a realignment of power. The question isn’t whether the SEC could go it alone. What really needs to be asked is what happens to the student-athletes if it does.
What Sankey is floating isn’t an exit from Division I, but a different kind of break. Picture the SEC as a mini‑NCAA for 16 schools: its own eligibility office and waiver process, its own rules for who gets into the transfer portal and when, its own NIL and tampering enforcement, layered on top of, or even instead of, national rules. The SEC already knows how to build things outside the NCAA, as it has been driving force in the structure and expansion of the College Football Playoff. The SEC has the money, the media infrastructure, the political relationships, and now apparently the institutional will to act unilaterally.
If that happens, athletes need to understand that this is not a blank canvas. The SEC’s frustration is pointed at tampering, NIL gamesmanship, and the unanticipated ramifications of the House settlement, not at expanding athlete rights. When conference leaders talk about restoring order, the next question should be: whose order? Prior to court decisions in recent years, athletes had no direct revenue share, fragile NIL rights at best, and limited freedom to transfer without penalty. Every inch of progress was wrestled from institutions through lawsuits, not gifted in a moment of enlightenment.
A conference‑run system opens the door to going backwards in very specific ways. Imagine tamper‑proof contracts with real liquidated damages for leaving early, the college version of non‑compete clauses, enforced in the name of stability (Duke v. Mensah is an early test case). Imagine revenue‑sharing caps calibrated by the conference, not by a negotiated or court‑reviewed framework, giving schools one more way to squeeze athletes while claiming compliance. Imagine eligibility clocks and waiver rules that punish movement across conference borders, making eligibility fights even harder to win because there is no national baseline to appeal to. Now put waiver decisions in the hands of a conference office even further removed from public oversight, coupled with public universities working to exempt athletics from public records requests, and you’ve amplified the institutional bias many of my clients already face when they try to get a fair read on their eligibility.
There also is a legal reality here that doesn’t go away just because we swap NCAA for SEC. Some in the conference seem to believe they can make a stronger antitrust argument as a single conference because they lack market control. But a 16‑school superconference that dominates media rights, recruiting, and fan interest has enormous market power over athletes who want to compete at that level. If that bloc collectively sets the terms of pay, eligibility, and mobility, courts are unlikely to shrug and go along with it. Cases like Johnson v. NCAA and the entire post‑House line of antitrust challenges are about coordinated restraints on labor, not labels.
And this is not just an SEC story. If the most powerful conference in the country designs its own governance system, everyone else will feel it. Mid‑major athletes lose the leverage that comes from national standards on eligibility and transfer; their appeals get weaker when the big leagues play by different rules. Non‑revenue and Olympic sports, already squeezed by the cost of revenue sharing, become the easiest place to cut when conference rulemaking is organized around protecting a multibillion‑dollar football product. Title IX enforcement, already the next battleground in this space, risks turning into a patchwork of conference experiments instead of a consistent guardrail.
From where I sit, the SEC going it alone is not athlete empowerment but power consolidation, unless it comes with three things: 1) a federal floor of athlete protections that no conference can undercut, 2) real and enforceable safeguards for non‑revenue and women’s sports, and 3) guaranteed athlete representation inside any conference‑level decision‑making body. Every time we’ve let institutions rewrite the rules without athletes in the room, athletes have paid the price. The only real question now is whether this time will be any different.
EXHIBIT A
There may not be a better moment that captures the crux of the “crisis” in college sport that the exchange between Senators Tommy Tuberville and Chris Murphy. To Senator Tuberville’s big idea: fix everything by letting student-athletes transfer only once, Senator Chris Murphy asked the obvious follow‑up — “Coaches too?” — generating a long pause and sheepish answer from the former Auburn football coach: “You got me, Chris.” That’s the whole game, right there. This isn’t about a broad “crisis.” It’s not about coaching buyouts that look like hedge‑fund bonuses, or facilities arms races or even eligibility. It’s about one thing: keeping the people who make the money from actually getting the money, beyond a scholarship, while everyone else at the table pretends this is all about “protecting the kids.” Yes, college sports is on a dangerous track, but the arguments pointing the finger in a single direction is a little rich.
EXHIBIT B
Great story this week in Front Office Sports revisiting something I suggested last year: that revenue sharing under the House settlement might let non–football-centric schools punch above their weight in other sports, or even revive once-dominant programs like men’s basketball at Georgetown and St. John’s. It hasn’t happened, and it’s for the same reason the College Sports Commission now blames for NIL delays: the unexpected, and very creative, proliferation of over-the-cap spending. But let’s keep in mind, this over-the-cap spending wasn’t the athletes’ idea - but the institutions that now want to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
ON THE DOCKET
That didn’t take long. Last week, I said the real test of this new NIL Go world would come when athletes finally challenged a denial. Well, 18 Nebraska football players are in arbitration over more than $1 million in third-party NIL deals the CSC has refused to approve. While first, it may also end up as unique as a law passed by the Nebraska state legislature prohibits penalizing athletes from receiving compensation. Either way, it’s the first serious crack at the system athletes were told would “protect” them. In reality, the case will decide whether a private clearinghouse, created by conferences, can quietly veto lawful contracts and still claim it’s not restraining athlete compensation. If an arbitrator blesses that model, expect more rejections. If the players win, expect the entire enforcement framework to start wobbling.
FOOTNOTES
78%
Number of deals submitted through NIL Go in January and February tied to “associated entities.” Those establishing the system expected them to be only 10%
