SEC presidents come out against major provision of new Senate bill

The Protect College Sports Act was unveiled on Wednesday, and a major provision is an avenue toward pooling TV rights among all FBS conferences. Every professional league pools its rights -- there aren't separate AFC South and NFC East packages, after all -- and so, the thinking goes, pooling all the college football TV rights into one pie would create bigger slices for everyone.

Those arguments tend to come from places outside the Big Ten and the SEC, who were the only conferences not to support the PCSA.

On Thursday, the SEC's presidents and chancellors closed their annual spring meetings in Sandestin, Fla., coming out against pooling TV rights fees.

We've documented well on this site how the new SEC on ABC package is kicking everyone else's tail from goal line to goal line, and it's pretty clear the conference is in line for a substantial raise once its current deal expires in 2033-34. In short, the SEC views the PCSA as an avenue for Kansas State and Wake Forest to get paid by the money Alabama and Georgia generate.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey cautioned that those pushing for the pooling of TV rights have "no idea how hard those conversations will be. No idea.” 

Speaking to ESPN's David Hale, Sankey expounded.

"We understand our value and where we can grow our value and believe part of this effort is to attach others to our value," he said. "You're in a universe where there's a pretty defined pool of media rights, and those are driven by eyeballs, leadership and consumption. We do that very well and want that to continue. We also want the flexibility to decide where our games are played and who decides that."

Elsewhere, Athletes.org, which fancies itself as the players' union for college athletes, came out against the PCSA as well, on the grounds that it's too restrictive of players' ability to freely change teams. Notably, the PCSA does not prevent college athletes from becoming employees, and leaves in place a mechanism for raising the House rev-share cap. From the organization:

The Protect College Sports Act is being marketed as a solution to stabilize college sports, but in reality, it protects schools, conferences, the College Sports Commission and NCAA leadership at the expense of college athletes it claims to protect. At its core, the bill would grant antitrust protections to the NCAA and its member institutions while legalizing restrictions on athlete compensation, transfers and eligibility. If passed, this bill will directly attack athlete freedom and serve as a roadblock to true independent athlete representation through a players association in college sports.

Getting the long-awaited "guardrails" in college sports will require compromise, something the PCSA authors tried hard to do. But out in the real world, every different constituency within the massive college sports industry thinks everyone else should be doing the compromising.