Three takeaways from Greg Sankey’s address to open SEC Media Days
Talking season is officially here.
Keyboards clicked, radio row buzzed and Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey took the stage for his annual media days address at the Grand Hyatt smack dab in the heart of Music City on Monday morning.
Sankey, who recently agreed to a contract that will keep him in his current role through at least 2028, has turned into the de facto voice of college football in recent years as name, image and likeness discourse, conference realignment and myriad other issues have put college football through its most tumultuous stretch in years.
On Monday, Sankey was queried on a wide range of topics just a football throw away from the glitz and glam of Music Row and the rowdy bachelor and bachelorette parties bouncing from honky tonk to honky tonk a few doors down.
Here’s a look at some of the highlights from Sankey’s speech:
Will the SEC legislate name, image and likeness itself?
NIL has become a hot-button topic within the league for well over a year now. The Jimbo Fisher-Nick Saban dispute a year ago added fire to an already combustible situation, and the coals have yet to really cool in and around the league.
The NCAA has largely avoided putting in or enforcing any major issues with turning NIL into pay-for-play ploys to land recruits, which are technically outlawed under current bylaws. The hope has been Congress could enact legislation to help govern the issue, but that remains a moving target. Various conferences, too, have reportedly toyed with the idea of legislating the issue themselves.
Sankey, though, stopped short of saying anything on that front might be coming.
“Our activities in Congress or discussions with states and even discussions of conference policies are not about taking away,” Sankey said. “Not about taking away these new name, image, and likeness opportunities. In many ways, it’s been a net positive for young people.
“But we all know there are stories — some stories told and others not told — of promises made but not fulfilled, of inducements offered but not provided, of empty commitments of NIL agreements that created more questions than provided answers, and other behaviors in this space that rightly cause concern.
“The reality is our student-athletes deserve something better than a patchwork of state laws that support their name, image, and likeness activities, if ‘support’ is the right word.”
What is the league doing about storming football fields?
The SEC announced a new wave of penalties for field storming during its spring meetings in Destin, Florida, in June, but Sankey provided more clarity on where the league stands on the subject.
“We did,” Sankey said when asked if changes had been made. “In fact, we adopted updated policies around fines, so fines were increased. The revenue flows directly to the visiting institution.”
Those updates to the policy included a sliding scale in fine numbers that will penalize schools when fans rush the playing surface, including the caveat that those fines will go to the opposing institution involved.
The new financial penalties will be as follows:
- First offense: $100,000
- Second offense: $250,000
- Third and subsequent offenses: $500,000
Why the SEC is eliminating divisions in football
Scheduling talk has been at the center of many discussion involving the SEC of late as it prepares to add Texas and Oklahoma to the league in 2024.
The conference previously announced a temporary eight-game slate that will go into effect for the 2024 season only. However, Sankey added more clarity as to how the SEC decided to eliminate divisions — presumably on a permanent basis whenever it opts to announce a more lasting schedule plan.
“When we began discussing a 16-team football schedule in August of ‘21, the first set of conversations were, again, taking the word ‘fair’ and the word ‘balance’ and defining them,” Sankey explained. “ ’Balance’ was rotating teams through with greater frequency, so I think plenty of people have written about a team may not see a team certainly for six years or may not go someplace for 12 years if they’re in another division. That was balanced. Fair was narrowing the competitive equity band, which is what we achieved, even with our eight-game schedule we announced a few weeks ago in June.”
South Carolina’s schedule will notably not include Georgia for the first time since USC joined the league in football in 1992. The Gamecocks will, however, add a date against Oklahoma — Shane Beamer’s former employer — and games against teams that previously resided in the SEC West in Alabama, Mississippi, LSU and Texas A&M.
This story was originally published July 17, 2023 at 7:17 PM.
