SEC commissioner Greg Sankey on Friday pushed back against suggestions from Capitol Hill that his league and the Big Ten are threats to join forces and leave the rest of college sports behind while calling out the private equity firms that have been lobbying federal lawmakers.
“It’s one of those strange twists right off the bat that somehow we’re being pointed out as the people pushing super leagues when we’ve spent years resisting those ideas, but that’s the kind of crazy world we live in, right?” Sankey said on the “Paul Finebaum Show.”
The Senate bill introduced this week by Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas-R) and Maria Cantwell (Wash.-D) specifically targets the Big Ten and SEC, placing limits on the conferences’ ability to add members and prohibiting them from merging.
The SEC and the Big Ten have withheld support for the Protecting College Sports Act, but have expressed interest in working with lawmakers on revisions.
Cruz and Cantwell have said the bill is intended to promote a more level playing field across Division I, thwart future conference realignment and prevent the consolidation of the biggest brands and wealthiest schools at the expense of smaller schools — a theoretical Super League.
Sankey said the SEC and Big Ten have no interest in that concept, and he and Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti conveyed that to Cruz in a meeting earlier this week.
“We have not had a conversation about some kind of merger or Super League, and I think one of the flaws in the bill is to pick a point in time, which is like the most recent tax filings. There are two conferences that had over a billion dollars in revenue, and those two conferences (the Big Ten and SEC) are singled out and can’t do certain things,” Sankey said. “One of my observations is, hey, you know what? If we can’t do that, make that apply to the ACC and Big 12. Make that apply to the Ohio Valley Conference and my old friends in the Southland Conference. We shouldn’t be singled out, because we’re not having that conversation on the other side of the coin.”
Sankey noted that leaders from Smash Sports, a subsidiary of the private equity firm Smash Capital, had been pitching college sports leaders on a new structure for major college football for more than a year before turning attention to lawmakers in Washington.
“We flat know there’s groups like Smash Capital, some of these College Sports Tomorrow groups that have formed private equity groups who’ve called me, who suggest, ‘Hey, here’s a Super League,’” Sankey said. “The bill ought to deal with those as well. If it’s wrong for the SEC and Big Ten to take that course of action, then we shouldn’t be allowing that course of action for anyone, and I think those are important elements.”
The PE firms have also pushed for the inclusion in the bill of a commitment to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which would pave the way for major college football conferences to pool media rights. Supporters of consolidating media rights say doing so would unlock huge revenue gains for all conferences, with estimated increases of $4 to $8 billion annually.
The Big Ten and SEC, which have the most valuable media rights in college sports, have pushed back against that, too, and said the conferences are better off on their own.
“The core is we want to make sure that we have the independent decision-making that served us so well for so many decades, we want that moving into the future,” Sankey said.
Pooling of media rights is an idea that gained more widespread attention last fall when it was pushed by billionaire Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell, who has had the ear of President Trump on college sports issues and was part of the presidential panel convened earlier this spring.
On Thursday, Trump backed the Cruz/Cantwell bill and urged Congress to act.
Sankey linked Campbell to the PE firms that are eyeing investment in college sports.
“Cody Campbell is part of that league, and he’s the billionaire behind the curtain,” Sankey said.
The Big Ten and SEC made the biggest and most consequential moves in college sports during and after the last round of conference realignment, with the SEC adding Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12, and the Big Ten luring USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington from the Pac-12.
The SEC and Big Ten also negotiated a College Football Playoff contract that gives them the biggest cuts of revenue and ultimate decision-making power.
The power play has allowed Campbell and others to paint the Big Ten and SEC as villains to lawmakers.
Sankey said the narrative belies the facts.
“In my opinion, it’s just my opinion, part of the reason that all of a sudden we’re identified in the Super League category is because there’s an effort to say, ‘Well, disregard the input from these two leaders,’” Sankey said. “Hey, I got to give people credit. (It’s) been an effective strategy. It’s not accurate, it’s not consistent with the truth.”
Even if the bill passes the Senate, it could face major issues getting through the House of Representatives. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) slammed the bill on Thursday, telling Politico, “Nobody can credibly say they’re going to move a bill to address college athletics and have opposition from the two major college athletic conferences.”
Scalise added that the legislation faces “big problems” in the House, particularly if the language allows athletes to be classified as employees.
“You also don’t want to open up all the schools to lawsuits from trial lawyers that would make a much more litigious environment,” Scalise told Politico.
— The Athletic‘s Scott Dochterman contributed to this report.
