Steve Sarkisian on how to combat gaming the system with availability reports: 'Fine us'

SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Florida have been dominated by dialogue surrounding the recent House v. NCAA settlement that could be groundbreaking across collegiate athletics.

From a revenue-sharing model that will make student-athletes employees for the first time ever to a potential roster cap versus the traditional scholarship limit for teams, there are plenty of different monumental changes that could be on the horizon for collegiate sports.

One change that has also been discussed at SEC Spring Meetings is the implementation of availability reports in football similar to the injury report in NFL. An area of college football that has always involved some gamesmanship with examples like injured players participating in pre-game warmups before eventually not suiting up for kickoff.

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was asked what should be done if coaches try to toy with the system of availability reports in the future if they are implemented. Proving a simple answer that takes a page out of the books of the pros.

“Fine us,” Sarkisian said. “That’s what they do in the NFL.”

In the NFL teams are required to provide three injury reports in the week leading up to the game, making the status of players known information with little to no uncertainty for all parties ahead of game day. With Sarkisian believing that an NFL-style availability report should also come with NFL-style punishment to keep things in order.

“I’m a big believer in this, the NFL has figured a lot of this stuff out already. They’ve already had to live through all of these things that have occurred. So we don’t have to try to recreate the wheel so much right?” Sarkisian asked. “If I try to game they system and I don’t report a guy or and so on and so forth, fine us. We all like the money that we make, and so that’s a really simple way to get us to adhere to the rules.”

The rise of sports gambling particularly in college sports has also played an impact on the idea of creating an availability report. As plenty of money is now being bet on SEC football and beyond that could significantly impact betting markets based on the uncovering of injury intel.

“We don’t want to just rush into something,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said at Spring Meetings. “It’s not injury reporting. It’s a very different circumstance given some of the privacy issues we have. Yet when you start to see the numbers of dollars being bet on legalized sports gambling around college sports — not just football, but men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, baseball — all of those catch your attention.”

Unethical gambling practices have been seen both recently and historically in the sports landscape. That plus the further leveling of the playing field could make availability reports a potentially promising idea and solution to several issues across all college sports moving forward.