Greg Sankey says NIL regulation is needed and athletes are asking for it

Since the dawn of the new NIL era in college sports, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has called for a blanket regulation policy, whether that’s nation-wide or within each conference. He just doesn’t believe the current setup, where each state has made their own rules, works for a nation-wide collegiate sports.

He joined the SEC Network crew on Monday morning ahead of SEC Media Days to discuss a wide range of topics, including his thoughts on NIL regulation and how it can improve. For Sankey, it’s as simple as getting everyone on the same page.

Whether that’s letting the conferences or NCAA come together and make the rules for everyone, or allowing congress to finally pass some legislation that applies to all states, rather than letting each fend for themselves. Heck, he even says that the student-athletes are asking for regulation.

So take a look at Greg Sankey’s full comments on the current NIL regulation situation, where he lays out the process he and other decision-makers are currently going through with trying to figure out a better way to regulate NIL.

Greg Sankey on why national NIL regulation is needed

“Watching states very curiously bar the conference from overseeing its own policies, that we don’t even have the policies — it’s a level of confusion and misunderstanding, I think, in the part of state legislators that are doing that. And we’re going to have to go through a point of correction.

“I actually think what the states are doing now emphasizes the need for congressional action to have a uniform standard around college sports — name, image and likeness activity and some other pieces. Our student athletes ask us for that.

“There’s no defense to say ‘this is the best we can do by our student athletes.’ Because they’re asking for us to engage in adopting policies so when they line up across the line of scrimmage from an opponent from another state, what they’re asking is… ‘we just want a common sense standard.’ And I think that’s reasonable.”

Greg Sankey was then asked if discussions between he and the leaders of the respective SEC programs have begun. To which he explained:

“Yes. The first time was in Destin in 2022. We kind of put it aside as we focused on the congressional conversation. In March, we actually outlined a set of potential conference policies.”

“And understand: we’re not taking things away. What we have is a system with no transparency, no oversight, no regulation, no enforcement, and we have no idea who’s printing business cards at Kinko’s and saying they’re an agent. I mean, literally, that’s what this state-by-state rollout has done.

“So we’ve identified some of those strategies. We work with our attorneys to do that properly. We’ve identified where the potential policies would be in conflict with state laws, and then we’ll have to engage, if we’re going to go the state route, with some space if the conference is going to be the regulatory and oversight body.”

There you have it. SEC commissioner Sankey again calls for some kind of overarching standard on NIL, with hopes that congress may even pass something.