Greg Sankey on NIL reform: 'There's no system of sport that's fully unregulated'

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey on Friday again returned to one of his favorite subjects: Uniformity in state NIL laws, or the lack thereof. Speaking about the issue at length on The Pat McAfee Show, Sankey expounded on the issue, often emphatically so.

The issues at hand haven’t changed in recent months: Different states have different tolerances and laws on the books for how their universities can function in regards to NIL and collectives and if high schoolers can earn NIL money. And Sankey’s tone hasn’t changed much either, as he decried the “unregulated” landscape that is a patchwork of state laws and NCAA regulations.

“But it can’t stay as it is. It’s just not a functioning system. There’s no system of sport that’s fully unregulated. There’s just none. Globally, there’s none. And so we’ve moved into this space where states determine and if they make good laws in State A and State B has no laws, the legislators come back and say, ‘Well why do we have any laws at all? If State B is not filing anything, why do we have anything?’ So, it’s a time of change, it’s uncomfortable. One of my concerns is the really, really good leaders get frustrated and say, ‘I’m not going to function like this. I want to build a team. I want to build into young people. I want them to have opportunity.’ But I think some of what you even referenced, the interruptions, and the coach say, ‘This just doesn’t make sense.’ There’s gotta be a better way to manage this than we have right now,” Sankey said.

Sankey highlighted concerns that control or power over decisions is increasingly being leased out to third parties.

“I am highly concerned. Because we are shifting authority of our programs from presidents, chancellors, athletic directors and coaches to others on the outside: Collectives, boosters. We fought, for years, despite kind of the smile and wink at the beginning, the keep people out of our programs to the greatest extent possible. And if you didn’t, you were accountable for that. We’ve allowed new economic opportunities. There’s a lot of health in that — no one is saying take it away, but the young people in our programs are saying ‘This doesn’t make sense.’ They’re saying ‘I want to know when I play in a football game and I line up at the line of scrimmage that the person across from is under the same laws, the same regulations that I have to follow.’ I want to know the people that follow, when they’re 17, 18 years olds, aren’t trying to figure out 20 different state laws being recruited,” Sankey said.

Amidst all this, Sankey said, there has been a distinct lack of protections for the athletes signing NIL deals.

“And we’ve provided no protections for young people. And this isn’t like the 59-year-old conference commissioner saying ‘Get off my lawn,’ this is meaningful risk with no transparency, no oversight, anybody can hit print on their computer and have a business card and a contract in hand and we may not have people with the right advisors around our young people and they deserve better than this environment. Forget the coaches complaining for just a second, the young people in our programs deserve better than a state-by-state, unregulated environment,” Sankey said.