Greg Sankey expects 'more clarity’ in coming months on college football following House agreement
After a landmark week, a new era is coming soon to college athletics. The NCAA and Power 5 conferences agreed to a historic settlement in the House case, although there are still plenty of questions about what the new landscape will look like.
Speaking at the SEC Baseball Tournament in Hoover, Ala., commissioner Greg Sankey said the picture will likely get clearer over the coming months.
After the conferences and NCAA voted to approve the settlement, the next step will be for Judge Claudia Wilken to certify it in what could be a months-long process. Sankey said while everything is in the hands of the judicial system, he thinks “clarity” will come within the year about what lies ahead.
“As I understand – so, I’m not in charge of everything, despite what some people will say,” Sankey said on SEC Now. “Not in the next couple of months. The next couple of months will be that process – the ability to walk through the legal system, the court system, a longer-form agreement. Decisions that can be made, then, at the conference level about certain structural issues, some national policy changes that need to take place. And then, it goes through the legal process that takes months upon months.
“I look out, probably a year from now when we’ll have – we have a level of clarity now. But we’ll have more clarity as we walk through these next 12 months.”
Greg Sankey: ‘There’s a lot to process’ after House case
The major components of the settlement include back damages and what is soon to be the revenue-sharing era in college athletics. The back damages total to $2.77 billion, and the NCAA is expected to be responsible for 40% of that payout. That final 60% will then come from a reduction in school distributions.
Then, there’s the revenue-sharing portion. Schools would be able to disperse roughly $20 million annually to athletes, although they’d be able to opt-in or opt-out. It’s also unclear how Title IX would factor into payouts and how the distribution would be split.
The soonest this structure would begin is the 2025-26 academic year, depending on how smoothly things go over the coming weeks and months.
Greg Sankey – borrowing from now-retired Alabama coach Nick Saban – pointed out the need to stick to the “process” when looking at the road ahead with such historic changes coming to college athletics.
“We had a coach who’s now retired who talked about the process and his hand would go out. So there’s a lot to the process, legally, but it’s an important moment,” Sankey said. “I think what you have to do is go back – I remember my first year as commissioner, we were implementing cost-of-attendance type scholarships. A lot of stress over that. Then, we had a decision to the Supreme Court and what’s called the Alston case. We have educational grants, just sort of $6,000 per student-athlete from an opportunity standpoint. We’ve implemented that. And you’ve seen this continuing expansion of support, whether it’s concierge medical care, concierge mental wellness care, post-eligibility medical care. These old broken down guys didn’t have that experience back in the day.
“There is no better time to be a student-athlete than right now. Period. And we have to protect those opportunities, and we have to also acknowledge there are limits. We’re going to have some hard decisions to make over the next few years as we transition to this new model. But we’ve got an opportunity, I think, to control elements of our future and keep these broad-based programs intact.”