With college sports more in disarray than ever, Big Ten left searching for answers

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Within a lavish conference room here on Tuesday morning, Big Ten university presidents and chancellors gathered for another scheduled meeting.

This one came with the casual — but likely intentional – mention of a comment made from a man 1,800 miles away: Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard.

A day earlier, while speaking to local reporters in Iowa about the SEC and Big Ten’s potential NCAA breakaway discussions, Pollard suggested that the other FBS conference should just “let’em go.”

If the four leagues cannot agree on changes to the College Sports Commission, they just might.

Pollard’s comment jarred those here and resulted in a mention within the meeting room from the Big Ten commissioner himself — yet another sign of division among the four power conferences, two of them financially pulling away from the others.

“We thought 350 [schools] in Division I was too many, then 130 [in FBS] was too many and now it turns out that 65 [power conference schools] is too many,” said one Big Ten athletic director. “It only works if you self-govern.”

In the final days of the Big Ten’s four-day administrative meetings, university presidents and chancellors and their athletic directors dug in on the topic du jour: What new-fangled idea will college sports executives come up with this time to attempt to regulate the industry?

A conference-only governing model away from the NCAA? An increase in the revenue-share cap and luxury tax? Collective bargaining? Or the elimination of all rules and caps?

And above all, by golly, will Congress finally help?

The conversations unfolded in the wake of the latest episode on Capitol Hill: The SCORE Act has died.

Republican leadership pulled from the voting schedule this week the NCAA-backed legislation, which would have granted conferences legal protection to enforce rules such as limiting player movement, standardizing eligibility and capping compensation, among other things. And though the bill’s odds of Senate approval were slim, the decision to yank the vote served as the latest flop at a critical moment in the industry — two years after the bill’s introduction and on its third attempt at a vote in eight months.

It is unlikely to be revived during this calendar year, according to those familiar with the process. Millions spent on lobbying efforts and hours invested in trips to Washington — commissioners Tony Petitti (Big Ten) and Greg Sankey (SEC) were just on the Hill last week — has resulted in “disappointment,” as Petitti put it on Tuesday.

The college sports industry’s next, new hope for legislation — at least in this Congress — now rests in negotiations between Sens. Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell that, while progressing, have not culminated yet in a deal as of Wednesday afternoon.

Big Ten administrators on Tuesday received a report from members of their Washington-based lobbying firm. Any Senate bill — similar to SCORE with more bipartisan concepts – is expected to include narrow antitrust protections around player movement (transfers) and eligibility standards, as well as some codification of portions of the NCAA’s landmark House settlement, optionality to pool media rights and an agent registry/certification system.

Will the Senate save the day?

“As someone who has worked actively with our elected officials in state and has spent time in D.C., I’m also in the camp that is not expecting help,” said Washington athletic director Pat Chun, whose senator, Cantwell, is at the center of the talks. “There comes a point where, after all these years, you just can't expect it.”

In comments made Tuesday, Petitti says he’s not ready to give up on the lobbying effort in D.C. despite the results: seven years and zero votes in either chamber.

But he sounded like a man exasperated.

“We talk a lot about the effort and time [spent],” he said. “At some point, if we can’t get something, does it sort of stop?”

Though the Senate version may be absent of the rigid anti-employment concept found in SCORE, the chances of its passage remain unclear, especially given what unfolded on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.

Members of the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus — fresh off thwarting the SCORE Act — unleashed a barrage of criticisms against SEC university leaders for remaining silent as their state lawmakers pursued attacks on the Voting Rights Act by redrawing congressional districts.

Members say that the redistricting effort is aimed at disadvantaged majority Black lawmakers and minority populations.

It served as the final death blow to SCORE, which the SEC and Big Ten backed in a significant way.

“The CBC could not support legislation benefitting major athletic institutions that continue to remain silent while Black voting rights continue to be dismantled across the South,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), the Congressional Black Caucus chair, told reporters while flanked by her membership.

In a thundering moment, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), stepping behind the podium, described institutional silence as being “complicit,” even loudly referring to specific schools by name. He urged “athletes to boycott institutions within the SEC that belong to states that have unleashed Jim Crow-like racially oppressive tactics.”

Was this a transcendent moment that may cause any congressional legislation — even that in the Senate — to stall?

That remains unclear. But as one person on the Hill put it, “This doesn’t help.”

Tuesday’s message from the Capitol steps served as another episode that’s sent panicked college administrators grasping, instead, for more solutions to their self-made problems: unlimited player movement, soaring roster compensation and inconsistent eligibility standards.

In the absence of national enforcement, Big Ten administrators are exploring a fracturing from the NCAA — a self-governance model also being explored, separately, by the SEC, as documented by Yahoo Sports on Monday and earlier this year.

The divide in above-the-cap NIL submissions to the College Sports Commission is an illustration of the gap among the leagues. The SEC and Big Ten have submitted more than five times the amount of deals since Janauary, a number that as of earlier this month was around $200 million — a large portion of which is believed to have been rejected by the CSC or remains under review.

The issue necessitates change within the orginization, such as increasing the cap or exempting from scruitiny a portion of deals (perhaps those of $10,000 or less — just one idea).

“The question is, can all four of us agree on changes?” asked one person here.

“We are committed to try to get this thing right with our colleagues,” Petitti said. “You build something new, you’ve got to be prepared to change and address the way things are working.”

The Big Ten’s self-governing conversations — and its ultimate decision to do it — will be determined on the CSC’s future and if the four leagues can agree, Petitti suggested here Tuesday. The Big 12 and ACC commissioners have said they are not interested in CSC changes without a more long-term plan for the enforcement entity. In past interviews, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua has signaled his desire to make changes, such as increasing the cap.

CSC CEO Bryan Seeley spoke to administrators here Tuesday afternoon in a session that many officials described as productive.

“Can we collectively make adjustments that we think we need based on what is happening,” Petitti said.

“You’ve got a short-term, immediate issue. A lot of student-athletes put a lot of deals in. We’ve got a high volume of deals in,” Petitti said. “What’s the right way we make sure student-athletes are getting what we want them to get? There are some small adjustments to help on volume with small deals and there are bigger adjustments. It’s not a long-term fix. The two [transfer] portals coming up [football in January and basketball next spring] ... we’ve got to get to a place where we have to operate.”