MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — It sounds wild. Its own rules. Its own playoff. Its own little universe, as one athletic director put it. The SEC’s breaking away from the rest of college sports, forming its own fiefdom, seems so outlandish that everyone here at the SEC meetings would be shooting it down.
And yet, they aren’t.
“I do foresee some things on the immediate horizon that have never been done before,” Auburn athletic director John Cohen said. “It changes the landscape of our league and maybe the landscape of intercollegiate athletics in general.”
This was a day after Kirby Smart, coach of the two-time defending SEC champion Georgia football team, advocated for the SEC’s holding its own playoff and setting its own rules, if the national status quo doesn’t change. Smart was advocating for what many have talked about for a while. Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin downplayed it as a “draconian step” but also stopped well short of ruling it out.
“Our league probably has enough appeal and market strength that we could survive. We may be the only league that could do that,” Stricklin said. “The most popular sports league in the world is Premier League Soccer, and it is basically in one country. And that country is half the size of land territory and half the population of the 12 states where the SEC is. Yet it has TV contracts from Asia to America. And likewise, I think our conference, even though we’re regional, we have national appeal.”
So what’s the deal here: Why are SEC people actually talking about this, what are the chances it could happen, and to what extent? Here is a primer, based on interviews leading up to and at this week’s spring meetings:
Are they seriously thinking about breaking away?
The answer to that depends on what kind of breakaway.
As for the most drastic step — completely breaking away, including a football playoff — there are significant hurdles, especially the College Football Playoff contract running through the 2031-32 season. Stricklin cautioned that it has not been “formally” discussed this week, and it’s been more theoretical.
Making SEC-only rules has been actively discussed, to the point commissioner Greg Sankey started the week pointing out it was nothing new. Each conference has its own bylaws, and the SEC used to have specific rules on things such as graduate transfers and signing limits.
The difference this time is that with everyone upset over national rules — eligibility, tampering, enforcement and how the House settlement is or isn’t working — the SEC has discussed going its own way on major issues. Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte said presidents and chancellors will discuss it Thursday, the final day of meetings.
“We are just looking for some stability,” Del Conte said.
The idea is that it would be much easier for the SEC to do things by itself. As Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks put it: “Maybe it’s difficult to do it with all 138 (FBS schools). I do have faith in our conference that we can move steps in that direction.”
So the question is how drastic those rules would be and whether they would lead to pulling away completely.
“I don’t think you can make up your own rules and still compete against others who are following different rules. So, in effect, you are just saying we’re going to be SEC-centric in all things,” Stricklin said. “I’m not advocating for that, I’m just saying that’s the mental, intellectual exercise you have to go down that path of when you start considering what it would look like.”
This would partially be leverage. Georgia president Jere Morehead has mentioned he thinks if the SEC made its own rules, other conferences would think about following suit.
But if others didn’t, then the SEC would have to be prepared to follow through and go far, even if it’s a full breakaway. There is sentiment to do just that.
“I think the frustration is real. I think it’s warranted,” Cohen said. “And I think some drastic measures are going to have to take place for us to get the train back on the tracks.”
Why?
NCAA rules have been gutted over the years via court challenges. That’s led college leaders to ask for antitrust protection from Congress. So far, that has not come, and optimism is faint, even after the latest bill introduced Wednesday.
If a conference pulled away as its own entity, it might have a better chance to withstand antitrust suits because athletes have other options.
“I’m not an antitrust lawyer, so I don’t know if I can answer that question,” Cohen said.
“Putting your arms around the many is much more difficult than putting your arms around the few, and I think in desperate times you have to take desperate measures,” he added.
What about a separate playoff? There’s the financial incentive: The SEC thinks it could make a lot of money and not share with anyone else, as it does now with the CFP. There’s the competitive reason: Critics will say the SEC is taking its ball and going home after three straight years of not making the CFP title game. SEC coaches will say it’s frustration over the lack of national standards and that breaking away would at least allow the 16 SEC schools to know they are on an even playing field against each other. In practice, at least.
“The coaches want transparency,” Sankey said. “Those things have to be addressed in some way that’s legally defensible, based on solid rationale that provides college-going experiences for college-going people. It provides for some level of equity and competition. I think those are really sound principles for decision-making, whether it’s nationally or at the conference level.”
Elephant (and Tiger, and Rebel) in the room
The call is coming from inside the house: As frustrated as everyone in the SEC is, their own teams are accused of not following the national rules. Ole Miss is under investigation for tampering, and coach Pete Golding thinks LSU should also be. Schools such as Texas are believed to be among the biggest spenders on their football roster.
Essentially, as much as the schools — including in the SEC — say they want rules to be enforced, they really don’t.
Bryan Seeley, who heads the College Sports Commission, charged with enforcing third-party rules, visited with SEC administrators Wednesday. In a media scrum afterwards, Seeley didn’t say the SEC was better or worse, just that the pushback is widespread.
“The power in the industry lies with the schools,” Seeley said. “And often — not always, but often — the reaction to us bringing an investigation or an enforcement action is to push back very strongly.”
Sankey, asked Tuesday about his own schools pushing back on NCAA rules, called it a “fair observation.” He said getting SEC schools to adhere to their own rules would be key.
“We have to get back to some kind of constraint, and I do think part of that is a commitment to say we want rules and we’re going to follow the rules,” Sankey said. “Saying that in the meeting room is one thing. Living that outside the meeting room is another.”
Then there’s whether the SEC would have the ability to investigate its own schools. Would it outsource it to a legal firm? How effective would the process be? There are plenty of questions, but the sentiment among coaches is it can’t be less effective than it is right now.
“If there are rules that nobody’s enforcing, that just creates this waterfall of people trying to skirt things,” Texas A&M coach Mike Elko said. “Are they being enforced? If so, cool, that’d be awesome. I think most of my colleagues would agree with that. I think we’re all probably skeptical of the fact that that’s possible, and so then if it’s not possible, then what are we talking about?”
Two more big obstacles
The SEC, if it made harsher rules than other conferences, could put itself at a competitive disadvantage. Cohen said that’s been discussed “many, many times.” Maybe that’s solved by completely breaking away, having your own playoff and not competing against everyone else.
“Do we want to have competitive equity within the SEC, or do you want to unencumber people to go compete on a national level? And so far we have chosen the latter,” Stricklin said. “So the thought is if you create SEC-only rules, you can create really good competitive equity in the league, but you would probably decide it makes more sense just to compete as a league.”
Can the SEC stomach not being part of NCAA tournaments, whether in basketball, baseball or anything else?
“Again, I would say everything’s still on the table,” said Cohen, who was Mississippi State’s baseball coach before moving into administration. “We’re going to do what’s right for the Southeastern Conference.”
The bottom line
It’s not unprecedented for the SEC to go alone. Several SEC people pointed to the 2020 football season, when the conference was prepared to play the season on its own.
“Everyone was vacillating on what to do. We took a stand and let others follow,” Brooks said. “So I think it’s not too dissimilar from that.”
Most likely, this will be about rules. Brooks homed in on the perception that some schools are skirting the House settlement by not turning in third-party deals to the CSC and pointed to having something in place in time for when the football transfer portal opens in December.
There are far-reaching possibilities that SEC sources have mentioned on background in exchange for their candor, preferring not to go public yet: Negotiating an SEC collective bargaining agreement with players that could secure a salary cap in exchange for player benefits. The SEC-only football playoff, the winner of which plays the best team from the rest of the country. That’s how the Super Bowl started. It could even bring back a regional charm to college football.
These are pie-in-the-sky notions right now, those sources acknowledged, and ultimately, they hope this talk just nudges the college sports world to collective solutions.
But if not …
“Something has to happen,” Cohen said. “Does it happen this week? No. But are the seeds planted for the future this week? Possibly.”
