NASHVILLE — Not long after Tony Petitti started his new job as the Big Ten commissioner last winter, he met with his athletic directors. And they give him a directive that would prove quite central to the 18 months that followed.
The ADs told him, You gotta get close to Greg.
The Big Ten’s campus leaders wanted their new commissioner to work hand-in-hand with the SEC’s Greg Sankey, the longest-tenured power conference commissioner and arguably the most powerful person in college athletics. And so he did. Soon, the two commissioners were in regular contact. They eventually formed an advisory group featuring leaders from both conferences.
And on Thursday, the two commissioners brought all of their athletic directors to the Grand Hyatt here to meet, to commiserate, to socialize … and to terrify the rest of college sports. There are plenty of administrators on other campuses and in other league offices worried about the two men who gathered here on Thursday, fearing that they will look for ways to support their Goliaths and disenfranchise Division I’s Davids. These two leagues continue to pull away from the rest of major college athletics, both in terms of revenue generation and influence. There’s always been stratification within Division I, but it’s growing greater seemingly by the day.
Asked about the perception that the Big Ten and SEC are continuing to separate themselves from the rest of college athletics, Sankey said he thinks it’s a “created” perception. He reiterated that he’s long been frustrated by the makeup of various NCAA governing bodies and the belief that representatives from smaller conferences facing different realities than the SEC should not slow down decision-making at the highest level of college sports.
“The big problems are not fixed in big rooms filled with people,” Sankey said. “It’s important that we narrow the conversation. … We talk regularly with our other two colleagues in the (Big 12 and ACC), and we talk with the Group of Five conferences. Do we bring everybody together? It was hard enough to schedule (a meeting with) two conferences of athletics directors — I can’t imagine trying to schedule four. We’ll share from this with our colleagues, and this is a start of a conversation for us.
“We recognize we’re part of a bigger ecosystem, but we also are interested in what we might be able to achieve together.”
Thursday’s meeting covered a variety of topics, from the fallout from the House v. NCAA settlement (which will include a revenue-sharing model and new roster limits for various sports), nonconference football scheduling between the two leagues and some discussion of the 12-team College Football Playoff. Both commissioners said the CFP discussion did not center on future changes to the bracket — even though the Big Ten and SEC will essentially be able to make changes themselves to the format if they want to — but rather what they want to see and learn from in the first year of the 12-team CFP. (Translation: They want a lot of their teams put in the bracket and seeded appropriately. If not … they’ll talk about changing some things. Guaranteeing increased access to the field would allow for more challenging cross-conference scheduling as well as potential play-in games to close out the regular season for both leagues.)
But even without formal votes taken or decisions made by the two groups of athletic directors, Thursday’s meeting felt like a bit of a flex. Sankey and Petitti knew there would be a great deal of interest surrounding the gathering, and they knew that a dozen or so members of the media would come. Sankey himself surmised that the various “super league” proposals that have been circulating among college football leaders were made public in light of the SEC-Big Ten meeting — and I don’t think I disagree with him. Those behind the proposals are trying to signal to these two important people that there may be other options for college sports as it heads toward an uncertain future.
But the two important people here know they hold all the cards. The super league era of college athletics is effectively already here. It’s the one with the 18-team Big Ten and the 16-team SEC. Those 34 schools will gobble up most of the bids to the CFP. Then, they’ll send a bunch of teams to the NCAA tournament. They’ll bring in more money than anyone else and also spend the most money on coaches and facilities (and players, when they can pay them, too). These schools are already living on one end of the spectrum of the college sports enterprise.
Petitti and Sankey have both been adamant that they can lead college sports forward — and that they don’t need private equity or private capital to get involved in its governance. Those “super league” proposals typically include tiered schools, promotion and relegation mechanisms and a pooling of media rights. There are myriad reasons that these proposals have received a great deal of pushback — these schools and conferences are all locked into various media deals, for one — but the biggest is also the most obvious. Why would people who currently have power want to give any of that up?
“I have yet to see a single thing in any plan that contains things that we couldn’t do ourselves and do with our (Power) 4 colleagues,” Petitti said Thursday. “I don’t see anything that’s proprietary, that we would need to have someone else control it, to do what they’re talking about. It’s, basically, schedule more good games and reorganize the way you play those games.
“At the end of the day, I think there’s a strong commitment that we have the ability to do all this ourselves. … The notion that college football is broken — what we do is broken — is just not right.”
Added Sankey: “We have the responsibility to make decisions for our future. … We’re going to focus on how we continue to lead and how we continue to improve. I think that’s the right focus, not to be distracted by these concepts from others.”
Of course, it makes sense that the two people who would have to cede power to a “super league” would be opposed to its formation. (I don’t like the many strings attached to those ventures myself, either, for the record.) But they’re right that they don’t need it. They have the luxury to say that — and the ability to make the big decisions themselves. Will they make them unilaterally? And will college sports continue to exist with diverse schools and so many sports all under one big tent?
These are the questions facing college sports as it careens toward its new reality. And these two commissioners are the ones who get to answer them.