How South Carolina, Ray Tanner are adjusting to changing college athletics landscape
Ray Tanner has spent time on the Florida Panhandle almost every year for the past decade.
These days, Tanner is among the elder statesmen in the room when Southeastern Conference athletic directors gather for their annual spring meetings in the Sunshine State. He’s currently the second-longest tenured AD in the league behind only Kentucky’s Mitch Barnhart — who’s been at the helm in Lexington since 2002.
That gives one perspective only time can afford.
“We’ve got a lot to be proud of at this conference,” Tanner told The State. “I’ve been in the league now a total of 26 years (as an AD and baseball coach). So it’s been great to be part of such a great league.”
This week, Tanner and the league’s athletic directors have spent countless hours discussing everything from possible changes in the SEC’s football scheduling model to adjustments in the sport’s intraconference transfer deadline.
Smack dab at the center of the beachfront discussions, though, have been the increasing frustration with inconsistent regulations surrounding name, image and likeness in collegiate athletics.
“Some kind of uniform name, image and likeness standard that supports some kind of equitable national competition, I think, is really, really important in college athletics and college football,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said on Tuesday. “We’ve always had that.”
The NCAA has largely stood pat in terms of regulating the payment of student-athletes for fear of possible legal challenges and, likely, antitrust suits that would be brought should they attempt to do so.
That’s left leagues, states and schools to regulate NIL, if they so choose, thus creating inconsistencies across the board.
“There’s a lot of ‘what ifs’ being discussed, a lot of ‘what ifs,’” Mississippi State president Mark Keenum told reporters on Thursday in regard to the future of college athletics. “No one has answers — no definitive answers, for sure.”
Where South Carolina, and other states, are currently hamstrung is through the limitations placed on their ability to be involved with NIL deals compared to more openly navigable laws elsewhere.
South Carolina’s current law precludes schools from managing NIL deals for student-athletes and/or having any real hands-on approach in the process.
That, however, is slated to change.
It’s largely expected that South Carolina’s state law that passed in April 2021 will be suspended on July 1, opening the door for the university to take a more direct approach to NIL and working student-athletes through prospective deals.
Tanner told The State he also wouldn’t rule out USC working to manage deals in-house, in addition to providing educational measures that would help athletes to avoid deals that might be harmful to them that would otherwise be signed under the current structure should the law be suspended.
“It still remains a little bit, maybe a little bit fuzzy,” Tanner said. “But we all want to help. You don’t want athletes to enter into any type of agreement where they get in trouble with it, or it’s they could be sued, or they think they have an opportunity and it gets nixed.
“We want to be helpful, and I think that’s the key component. But when you see those big numbers — OK, I can live with the big numbers. Let’s just make sure it’s all done for the right reasons, in the right way.”
One perceived solution to the smorgasbord of state laws that are now on the books is pushing student-athletes to become employees of their respective schools. That, though, has its own drawbacks.
South Carolina’s athletics department, for example, operated at a loss during the 2020 fiscal year, according to documents obtained by The State, mostly due to issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. That doesn’t include the nearly $15 million in buyouts the school has shouldered over the last two years to fire football coach Will Muschamp and men’s basketball coach Frank Martin.
Should student-athletes become salaried employees that stark financial reality would create a vacuum most schools wouldn’t be able to shoulder under the current structure.
“Just my opinion — once we go there, the model is in trouble once athletes are employees,” Tanner said. “I think that the intercollegiate model has serious issues and once you cross that threshold — some people say we’re already there — I don’t think we’re already there, yet.”
This isn’t to say South Carolina is wilting under the pressure of the monetization of college athletes or is on the verge of financial ruin.
Tanner told The State USC is working back toward operating in the black. It has also benefited, at least in part, from excitement surrounding Shane Beamer’s football program and the women’s basketball team’s most recent national title via increased ticket sales (Tanner didn’t provide exact numbers as those remain ongoing) and marketing.
“When coach (Dawn) Staley wins a national championship, you can’t buy that marketing,” Tanner explained. “You can’t pay for that and that’s tremendous. And her personally — her presentation and her platform — she reaches not just women’s basketball, she reaches across all barriers, lines. She’s incredible.”
College sports have changed plenty in Tanner’s decade as the AD at South Carolina. NIL, the transfer portal and conference realignment are only recent parts of that.
The influx of money through TV deals and conference revenues has also added pressure on ADs to nail their coaching hires — the most outward facing of their job responsibilities. Tanner, for example, has received ample criticism in recent days for not moving on from baseball coach Mark Kingston. (He said he wouldn’t comment on the matter for the time being.)
That said, Tanner said the newest slate of big-picture issues discussed in Destin have him looking endearingly toward the future. After all, no change after a while gets boring.
“It’s energizing,” he said. “I don’t think you want anything to be stagnant. You want progress.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
