A GRIP ON SPORTS • Sure, it is almost June. Time to pay those first-of-the-month bills before finalizing plans for summer’s adventures. Or fall forays. You are not alone. Those who run college football, and by extension college athletics, are following a similar time frame.
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• College football talk? This time of year? Yes sir. And it’s more important than you may think.
Down in the Florida panhandle, at one of the most-popular beach resorts on the Gulf of Whatever-It-Is-Called, the powers that be in the Southeastern Conference are meeting. With the future of the sport their conference dominates the major source of conversation.
All eyes are on playoff expansion. Whatever side the SEC comes down on – 16 teams with 11 at-large berths, or 16 with the SEC and Big Ten splitting equally eight automatic berths – there will be blood in the water.
And will not be the last attack in what has become a shark-infested pool that features a handful of predatory practices.
At the core, of course, is money. The need for it. The use of it. The division of it. How much goes to football’s upper echelon. How much is divvied out to everyone else. How much is shared with the players. The lawyers. Other sports.
Too many questions. Not enough answers.
The House settlement, still in limbo as federal judge Claudia Wilken decides whether changes she asked for from the NCAA go far enough, won’t alter what’s ahead. In fact, as schools wait for their walking orders – the settlement’s terms are supposed to be instituted by July 1 – there is talk of multiple other lawsuits on the horizon.
Why? Because settlement allows booster groups to still share NIL contracts with athletes, as long as they are submitted to a clearinghouse for approval. That’s above the more than $20 million in revenue each Division I school is permitted to share with their athletes.
What happens when the Deloitte-run clearinghouse denies a deal? Probably a lawsuit. Hundreds of them, each with the prospect of destroying the financial certainty power conference schools craved when agreeing to House. In other words, the settlement is already under attack. And it’s not yet in force.
That doesn’t even recognize many state legislatures have already passed laws trying to give their schools an advantage in the financial arena. No wonder SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said recently college athletics’ system has gone beyond chaotic to … well, whatever the next step is.
War? Armageddon? The plot of the next Mission: Impossible movie?
It’s similar to a game of three-card monte. And just as hard to follow.
As we try to keep our eyes focused on the CFP format for 2026 and beyond, something Sankey addressed Monday at the SEC’s annual meetings in Destin, Fla., those who run the game plot a legal challenge to a signed agreement that gave the SEC and Big Ten final say in the playoffs.
As fans start to understand the NIL mess, conference members begin to argue among themselves whether they will abide by any guardrails put in place.
As the NCAA negotiates with the four power conferences about taking over a large percentage of control of their governance, the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 squabble over the number – and how to wield the scepter.
It’s a mess. Getting messier. Is Congress the janitor? Fat chance. How does a congressperson from Georgia and one from, say, Montana, agree on a solution that doesn’t cause their constituents to rail about how their favorite school is getting punked in the deal? They don’t. The SEC’s interests are different than those of the about-to-be-re-constituted Pac-12. And those are different than the Big Sky or Big West.
The more I read about the issues, the surer I am no solution will ever be found. Like the rest of society, college sports have become too fragmented to find common ground. There has to be a revolution of sorts.
Football is destined to splinter even more, with the schools who favor a professional model headed off on their own. Basketball, the other sport that holds promise – or illusion – of a profit, will become the new battleground – and tradition will be once again outgunned. The other sports? Maybe some sanity will prevail and geography and like-interest will take us back to where we were a decade ago. Maybe.
A hurricane is brewing. It’s about to make landfall. The signs are everywhere this week in north Florida. And no one can stop it.
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WSU: Around the (current, old and future) Pac-12 and the nation, we linked Jon Wilner’s mailbag last week. It runs on the S-R site today. … John Canzano has a mailbag as well. … Wilner also has some thoughts in the Mercury News on this week’s starting time announcements of major nonconference games. The West Coast schools are not part of the equation. … Arizona State have a chance to put together another great football season with the players it has returning. … The NCAA announced the full baseball tournament field Monday. The best regional? We’re prejudiced, sure, but UCLA is hosting Mountain West champion Fresno State, perennial power Arizona State and the West’s most loved team, UC Irvine. OK, so that last description only applies to our house. … Oregon, the 12 seed, hosts Big West champion Cal Poly, Big 12 tournament champ Arizona and Utah Valley State. … Oregon State, which earned the eight seed after playing as an independent, will host TCU, USC, which snapped a long NCAA drought, and Saint Mary’s.
Gonzaga:Chet Holmgren is part of Oklahoma City’s new Big Three. And that trio, along with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Santa Clara grad Jalen Williams, have the Thunder on the brink of the NBA championship series. OKC took a 3-1 series lead with its 128-126 win in Minneapolis. … Elsewhere in the WCC, Saint Mary’s found out its NCAA baseball fate yesterday. The Gaels are headed to Corvallis and will face the host Beavers.
CCS: The Sasquatch battled through the NWAC baseball tournament over the weekend until final losing and finishing third.
Indians: Spokane played a rare Monday game yesterday, as it was a holiday. The Indians won, topping host Everett 4-3 on the wings of four solo home runs. Dave Nichols has the game coverage. … Dave also has a notebook covering what’s happened with Spokane the past week.
Mariners: For some odd reason the M’s did not play on Memorial Day. Seems like a lost shot at revenue to us. Anyhow, we can pass along this story about Cal Raleigh’s hot start and whether he can sustain it. … The Times’ Matt Calkins has decided the M’s are built for success this season.
Sonics: Former Seattle star Shawn Kemp is headed to court. He will stand trial for charges related to a parking-lot shooting in 2023. … Foul artists have taken over the NBA.
Seahawks: We linked this Washington Post story on Olympic flag football yesterday. It is on the S-R site today. … OTAs are about to start, and the Hawks will be installing their new offense.
Kraken: The Florida Panthers had a chance to sweep Carolina and move into the NHL finals Monday. They couldn’t get it done at home, falling 3-0 to the Hurricanes.
Indianapolis 500: Maybe the race was lucky Alex Palou was able to get past Marcus Ericsson late and hold on for the win. If not, there would have been a storm hitting Indianapolis yesterday. Ericsson was disqualified after failing a post-race check, one of three cars that were lost their finish spots.
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• I’m not sure I’ve ever been more pessimistic about college sports. Then again, nothing ever stays the same and like a band-aid that’s been on a cut for a few days, it’s time to just pull quickly. Quit putting off needed change. Rip it off and move on. Split football into one more classification. Make keeping the NCAA basketball distributions, financial and participatory, part of the equation for letting football powers make their own rules, and encourage schools to move their other sports to a more-geographic-based (and financially sensible) conference model. Until later …