A few days ago, a suggestion that Greg Sankey should kick Tennessee out of the SEC was more fanciful than practical. While the Vols and their henchmen in the Tennessee State Legislature obviously intend to ignore any sensible constraint on paying players, expulsion from the SEC would surely never happen.
It now appears that a threat of expulsion is no longer implausible. There is much to unpack to understand why. Yahoo's Ross Dellenger consistently provides a depth of information on complex college sports issues. Multiple reports by Dellenger are linked in this post. What follows is a summary of his reporting. A deep dive into his work is well worth the time.
In February, Dellenger reported, "A committee of power conference administrators took significant steps this week toward the creation of a new entity that will govern the evolving professionalized aspects of college sports." The new entity is the College Sports Commission, and it is intended to "oversee, manage and enforce the settlement-related athlete compensation system for all of NCAA Division I."
In early May, the Tennessee State Legislature amended its NIL legislation. Dellenger explained the amended legislation, "paves the way for state schools — University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Memphis, etc. — and their affiliated collectives to break House settlement-related rules and prevents college sports’ new enforcement entity from penalizing those schools."
Dellenger's conclusion about the motivation of the Tennessee politicians is spot on, "the law is a launched missile toward plans from the NCAA and power conferences to police the revenue-sharing era of college sports."
The College Sports Commission is not a done deal, but the NCAA has bought into giving enforcement control to the group should it become a reality. As reported by Dellenger, draft documents for the proposed entity have been written to " to prevent universities from using their state laws to violate new enforcement rules."
The plan is for all the Power Conference schools to sign a binding agreement with the College Sports Commission. Not doing so could potentially have dire consequences, including not being allowed to share in revenue from television deals and being unable to schedule games against other Power Conference teams. The depth of its non-compliance penalties is so severe that expulsion from a conference would only be an associated result.
What will happen to the world of college sports and when
No one knows what will come next, much less how and when all these changes will or will not happen. It is expected that soon the judge in the House Settlement will rule and approve a structure for player compensation. The College Sports Commission concept cannot move forward until the ruling. Legal obstructions intent on derailing the new structure are almost guaranteed.
Following a conversation between On3's Andy Staples and Tennessee Athletic Director, Danny White, Staples expressed "doubt certain schools and states will capitulate as easily as the conferences are hoping."