DALLAS — Taking advantage of his league’s new playing field, Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey stuck to something familiar: talking about leveling the playing field.
Opening the conference’s football media days Monday morning, Sankey tailored his talking points to the realm of the legality of college athlete compensation and the legislatures that now house the discourse on college sports.
It’s a complaint that has been raised before and that targets, more than indirectly, Missouri — the school and the state.
The name, image and likeness legislation, which took effect nearly a year ago in Missouri, is one of the most liberal or aggressive — depending on how you view the new rules — in recent college sports policies. The law allows Mizzou to begin using institutional funds to pay athletes and also allows high school recruits to earn endorsement money when they commit to in-state schools.
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Sankey, citing comments from SEC athletes, didn’t seem to be a fan of the perceived advantage he gave the Tigers.
“I’m actually the voice of our student-athletes,” he said, “because they’ve said time and time again, ‘As student-athletes, we deserve better than to have a patchwork of state laws that tell us how to handle our name, image and likeness. We deserve better than a race to the bottom for competitive purposes at the state level. And we, as student-athletes, want to know when we line up for a kickoff, a kickoff in a basketball game, the first pitch in a softball game or a baseball game, that the people who are wearing the other uniforms are being governed by the same set of standards that we are being governed by.”
No matter that state law clashes are so urgently on athletes’ minds when they are seconds away from starting a game, Sankey’s crusade against “outside ideas” about how to redeem or save college sports dominated his address to the SEC media.
With the addition of Oklahoma and Texas, which expanded their league to 16 schools, providing additional backdrops for the event that takes place along the Interstate 35 corridor that defines the SEC’s new western boundary, Sankey once again sang the praises of the conference’s competitive performance. He listed SEC products on NBA playoff participants, MLB rosters and Olympic teams.
And he framed it in the context of what he saw as the conference’s focus.
“We’re excelling at a time when the pressures to recruit, to win, to attract people are greater than ever,” Sankey said. “But we’ve added a host of external factors: litigation that’s coming up, state legislation, discussions with Congress and the emergence of the next big idea that’s being sold or presented as something that will quickly and completely solve the problems that college sports are facing right now.”
While the effects of conference realignment in recent years are on full display, Sankey has repeatedly downplayed the idea that the SEC could expand beyond 16 teams.
“We’re the only conference at this level where the name still means something, the southeastern part of the United States,” he said.
This, too, was something of a dig at a conference like the Atlantic Coast Conference, which now includes schools such as Southern Methodist (in Texas), California and Stanford (also in California) that are located a considerable distance from the East Coast.
Sankey’s stance on future realignment seemed firm, if not slightly worrisome for the future of college sports.
“We’re focused on our 16 (schools), period,” he said. “You’ve seen how we’ve made decisions over the last decade to have the contiguous states join us. I think that’s incredibly wise and it’s a remarkable force. I’m not going to guess what happens next.”
Football ranking tiebreakers to come
The SEC eliminated football divisions for its 16-team era, no longer sorting teams by region. While these designations were not particularly precise from a geographical standpoint (see MU’s assignment to the SEC East), they did help make the league standings more manageable.
Now, they’ll be seeded first through 16th, which will undoubtedly lead to a few or more teams tying for various records. A 16-team league and an eight-game conference schedule means that head-to-head records or performances against common opponents won’t be enough to separate all teams.
The tiebreaker procedures are expected to be finalized soon, Sankey said, although he was not too specific about what each step will be.
“This is a long-term plan that is structured, I believe, around eight principles,” he said.
Former MU coordinator moves to LSU
One former Mizzou name popped up during Louisiana State’s press conferences at the media event: defensive coordinator Blake Baker, who unexpectedly left MU for the Bayou in January.
His task at LSU is to rebuild a defense whose struggles have kept an offense powered by a Heisman Trophy winner from any sort of title race.
“Beyond the scheme, I think everybody has their own idea of what the scheme looks like,” coach Brian Kelly said. “Blake certainly has a comfort level set in a particular scheme. But it’s the relationships. You have to make players want to get on the field. You have to make players really want to be a part of those 11 guys running, hitting, being a part of that unit. Blake’s ability to orchestrate that, to bring that all together is what’s really been evident.”
Baker’s energetic coaching style made an immediate impression on LSU’s defensive players during spring camp, in part because he met some of them for the first time during a practice where the new defensive coordinator showed up in cleats.
“It made me laugh a little bit because it reflects what he says,” linebacker Harold Perkins Jr. said. “He comes in here wanting you to work, but he obviously works, too. He doesn’t just tell you what to do, he shows you how to do it.”
