An SEC without the Tennessee Vols is exactly what college football needs. Greg Sankey should take bold and extreme action, that if the Tennessee program intends to avoid all efforts of control coming from the expected House settlement, the SEC will show them the door.
This is an opinion piece. Others, perhaps many others, will disagree. Before jumping to that conclusion, consider the facts. In recent legislation, the Tennessee State Legislature expanded its previous rejection of any oversight by the NCAA in regards to NIL, player payments, and roster sizes. Sports lawyer, Mit Winter, explained, "It appears to prohibit all of the House settlement’s limits on NIL comp (salary cap, collective restrictions, etc.) unless they’re part of a federal law, valid court order, or determined to be exempt from antitrust law."
Legislators in the state of Tennessee have been at war with the NCAA during the last few years over NCAA punishments during Jeremy Pruitt's tenure. The Pols have won every contest. For the sake of every college football program outside the state of Tennessee, that cannot be allowed to happen again.
What the Wild West world of college football has is a norm that excuses actions in one program's best interest without any regard for the best interests of the college football world.
Let me be clear: college athletes deserve to be paid. But as Kirby Smart recently said, the current money-ruled dynamic is not sustainable. Smart added, "I just want it to be able to have a freshman come in and not make more than a senior,” Smart said. “And I’d like for other sports to be able to still survive. We’re on the brink of probably one to two years away from a lot of schools cutting sports. What’s the pushback going to be then when you start cutting non-revenue sports? I don’t want that to happen.”
Maybe Nick Saban can save college football through a protracted process that begins with a Presidential Commission. But, the only mitigating effort inching forward is the House Settlement. The state of Tennessee Legislature has thrown down a gauntlet that colleges in the Volunteer State will be free to ignore any such constraints.
Greg Sankey and SEC Action
Greg Sankey should give Tennessee an ultimatum that relying on Tennessee's legislative action violates SEC rules. If the SEC does not have such a rule, it should pass one, with punishment being expulsion. Vanderbilt would also have to be put on notice, though the program only has guilt by association.