All posts tagged: Sankey

SEC’s Sankey Says Superleague Idea ‘Not Consistent With the Truth’

SEC’s Sankey Says Superleague Idea ‘Not Consistent With the Truth’

Published by Sam Flores

Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey said there’s no talk of a merger with the Big Ten and called the notion that the SEC wants to form a super league — the specter of which is being leveraged by lawmakers as a central threat to the future of college sports — as “not consistent with the truth.” Sankey, in an interview Friday on “The Paul Finebaum Show,” outlined the reasons the SEC does not support a bipartisan bill introduced last week in Congress that would regulate a college sports landscape that has changed dramatically in the new era of multimillion-dollar payrolls for players. The commissioner said there were “about one dozen big buckets” of issues the league needed to analyze in the first section of the 111-page bill. That first section does not include a proposal in a subsequent part — the rewrite of a 1961 broadcasting law that would allow conferences to pool their media rights. The SEC and Big Ten oppose that idea, which in this bill would make the pooling voluntary. “But I …

SEC’s Sankey Says Language in Tampering Rules Is ‘Archaic’ and NCAA Needs to Adjust Quickly

SEC’s Sankey Says Language in Tampering Rules Is ‘Archaic’ and NCAA Needs to Adjust Quickly

Published by Sam Flores

Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey called NCAA language covering tampering rules “archaic,” but stopped short of urging the oversight body to halt tampering investigations, the way the Big Ten did earlier this week. Speaking to reporters Saturday at the SEC basketball tournament in Nashville, Tennessee, the commissioner said the new landscape in college sports, which includes name-image-likeness payments to players, shifting and liberal transfer rules along with the increased influence of agents, calls for the language surrounding the rules to be changed. “We need clarity,” Sankey said. “Secondly, we need understanding on the part of policymakers of what’s actually happening. How’s this game being played? That doesn’t mean the NCAA should just stop. But the notion that a memo would be sent and that changes things when the NCAA is perceived as sitting on the sidelines, that’s not a workable solution.” The NCAA followed with a memo — the one Sankey speaks of — announcing it would “pursue significant penalties” for tampering violations. While the Big Ten sent a letter to the NCAA asking for …