The SEC-Big Ten Advisory Group doesn’t have much of a ring to it. But as of Friday afternoon, the two mega conferences are formally, seriously, really teaming up to figure out the future of college sports, starting ... right now?
The board, when constructed, is expected to include university presidents, chancellors and athletic directors from the conferences, plus conference commissioners Greg Sankey (SEC) and Tony Petitti (Big Ten). When necessary, the advisory group — an official name didn’t come with Friday’s announcement — will talk with athletes and others outside its bubble. A short, 259-word joint statement had one direct reference to the NCAA.
“The Big Ten and the SEC have substantial investment in the NCAA and there is no question that the voices of our two conferences are integral to governance and other reform efforts,” Petitti said in the statement. “We recognize the similarity in our circumstances, as well as the urgency to address the common challenges we face.”
Or as Sankey put it in the same statement: “There are similar cultural and social impacts on our student-athletes, our institutions, and our communities because of the new collegiate athletics environment. We do not have predetermined answers to the myriad questions facing us. We do not expect to agree on everything but enhancing interaction between our conferences will help to focus efforts on common sense solutions.”
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Or put another way: There is the SEC and Big Ten. And then there’s everyone else, especially when it comes to questions about revenue sharing, the use of name, image and likeness (NIL) money and whether athletes should be considered employees.
Because of that, it’s logical for Sankey and Petitti to align themselves in this shared mission, whatever shape it takes in the coming weeks and months. Their conferences have the biggest television deals. Their schools spend the most on football, the word that should be front and center in any statement about the future of college sports (but is conspicuously absent here). With the Pac-12 down to two schools moving forward, the Power Five already has been whittled to the Power Four in football. But what realignment laid bare — what the College Football Playoff selection committee reminded everyone of in December — is that within those four, two stand alone.
The Big Ten and SEC made sure to note that, even together, they have “no authority to act independently and will only serve as a consulting body.” Sure, fine. But with so many members at the core of college football’s moneymaking machine, their influence is clear. Did they need to formalize an advisory group to wield it? It seems we will get to see.
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Time is an important factor. Since you read that last sentence, college sports has one fewer second to clean its house before the courts trade a mop for a blowtorch. And now another second has passed. If nothing else, then, this SEC-Big Ten partnership could help streamline ideas and proposals for the NCAA, speeding up discussions at a breaking point in the arc of college sports.
The House v. NCAA antitrust case, brought by athletes seeking backpay for the use of their NIL on television broadcasts, could cost the NCAA and its members more than $4 billion in damages. It’s the biggest legal challenge facing the college sports establishment, but smaller ones are piling up by the day. Between lawsuits and National Labor Relations Board cases, the future of employment status for athletes, transfer rules and the use of NIL money in recruiting — without even the vague threat of NCAA enforcement — is an open question.
If it weren’t so cringey to write “time is money” for the powers that be, it would make sense to write that here.
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In a joint interview with Yahoo Sports, Sankey and Petitti maintained this is not part of a long con to secede from everyone else. Instead, they painted the advisory group as a step toward a model that could satisfy schools across the country. Sankey told a story from the NCAA’s convention last month, when administrators allegedly asked him, “When are you and the Big Ten going to tell us what you want?” The answer, delivered a few weeks later: potentially somewhat soon.
It’s intuitive, given the wide gaps in revenue and spending, that what works long term for Alabama and Michigan almost certainly won’t work for DePaul or Temple. That reality was behind NCAA President Charlie Baker’s proposal, delivered in early December, to create a subdivision for schools that spend the most money on sports, namely football. The subdivision, as initially pitched, would require members to pay at least half their athletes a minimum of $30,000 annually through a trust. The idea is to use a financial barrier to split the haves and have nots, then allow the haves to vote on new rules for their subdivision without the have nots objecting to larger staffs or more scholarships in a given sport.
Those possibilities aren’t dead. The Division I Council is exploring Baker’s proposal and could ratify part of it this summer, permitting schools to directly pay athletes through NIL deals. But if you widen the scope, none of this is enough to dodge a massive hammer swing from the courts. None of it feels like something the NCAA could offer up in settlement talks for House — and for that purpose, experts view a model with revenue sharing and/or collective bargaining as much more useful.
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And in January, after the 11th congressional hearing on NIL and college sports since 2020, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) delivered a tough but predictable truth for the NCAA: This Congress, in her view, will not be the one to grant the NCAA the antitrust exemption it has long sought for protection against the litigation — past, present, future — that is shaking its foundation.
So if Congress won’t help, if the antitrust lawsuits won’t stop, if there’s no way to see the NCAA ducking loss after loss in court, what gives? What happens next? Before Friday, the answer to that brain-melting question didn’t include the SEC and Big Ten will officially put their heads together and try to chart a path forward. But now it does.
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