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At some point during any number of presidential meetings within the SEC over the past week, reality had to have finally sunk in.
It’s not if the SEC decides to walk away from the rest of college sports, it’s how far they separate.
Playing by its own rules is one thing. Playing by those rules and competing against only each other is a completely different animal.
But at this point, the animal is cornered and may have nowhere else to go.
It has gotten so bad with the latest round of let’s see what cash-chasing NIL attorneys and the local judiciary can screw with next, the SEC is beginning to lose control of its own once bulletproof fiefdom.
This is no longer about losing a few hundred million in revenue sharing with players, this is about conference survival.
You can’t have a conference if every rule you make can be overturned by judge shopping within your own membership. You can’t have a conference if you’re constantly beholden to playing well with others (see: the rest of the FBS), and the long, tedious — and at times, legally confining and financially draining — process that comes with it.
There’s a single, simple way to end all of this. To have your league, and have your rules and have those who want to play in your league follow your rules. Or they can’t play in your league — no matter what some judge in Calhoun County says.
But how badly does the SEC want it?
Bad enough to finally give in and collectively bargain with players? Bad enough to get into a room for weeks (maybe months) and hash out a labor agreement that’s beneficial to both the league and the players of the most popular conference in college sports?
You can play in our league, in the best stadiums with the craziest fans and the wildest atmospheres and with the potential for the greatest financial security. All it’s going to cost you is adhering to collectively bargained rules — no questions asked.
No more self-serving “representation” taking 15% (or more) to work every angle and get a better deal every season, no more attorneys and their 11th hour destruction.
The SEC is far and away the most popular television property in college football. It has television/streaming media king ESPN as its exclusive partner. It can essentially print money.
But the more it gets muddy with local judges and legal fights and Congressional intervention, the more the brand slips. The more it plays footsie with self-interested ― take your pick ― agents, representatives, and local, state and federal governments and their proxies, the more it loses.
The decision couldn’t be more clear.
But this move takes guts and vision. It’s not for the weak, and certainly not for those who for the past five years have insisted players “prefer” to not be employees.
The top 10% absolutely prefer not to be employees because the current system is set up for them to financially flourish. The other 90% are left to forage on their own, or with “representation” taking 15% or more every time they convince players they should move to the transfer portal.
Look, there are no angels in this process. Universities don’t want to share more of the billions they make annually in media rights deals, and players don’t give a flip about loyalty and roster building.
Then there are the ameba, the slivering unseen taking their percentage of the pie and constantly looking for the next legal angle to further chaos. More chaos means more money for players, and more in their pocket for creating the chaos in the first place.
Every problem of the past five years of the NIL era — every single one — could’ve been avoided with collective bargaining. At some point, this will come down to a cost benefit decision for the SEC.
Do they continue to fight the next chaos, month after month, year after year, and do more offseason damage to their brand? Or do they suck it up and make the change?
Rip off the Band-Aid, and make the move. That or eventually lose almost all control of your conference.
With nothing in return.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.