Schedules, newcomers and more: 14 parting thoughts from SEC spring meetings

It’s time to hit the sand.

After a week on the Florida Panhandle for SEC spring meetings in hotel lobbies and ballrooms, league administrators and coaches probably deserve a few minutes on the beach they’ve been roughly 200 yards from the past few days.

But before we get to sipping a daiquiri and applying sunscreen, let’s take a look at the week that was with 14 observations from the league’s annual sunshine-infused meeting of minds.

1. The SEC finally has a football schedule for 2024.

We kind of sort of have an answer on the scheduling issue.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey announced on Thursday the league would put a Band-Aid on its 2024 schedule, keeping things at an eight-game slate and including one Power Five or major independent nonconference game as it welcomes Texas and Oklahoma into the fold (more on that later).

It’s not necessarily the resolution folks hoped for heading down to Florida, but it also feels like the precursor to what should become a nine-game schedule in 2025 and beyond.

2. When will we get a more permanent resolution on SEC scheduling?

Sankey was adamant in his press briefing following the announcement of the 2024 schedule the league wouldn’t drag its feet on finding a long-term solution to the scheduling debate.

The choices have functionally boiled down to two options: an eight-game slate with one permanent matchup and a nine-game schedule with three permanent matchups. The likeliest scenario is the league shifts to the nine-game slate and the feeling this week is it’s only a matter of time before that happens.

3. RIP divisions, TBD permanent rivals for SEC football teams.

Bear with me, one more note on scheduling.

As part of the new model, divisions will go away following the 2023 season. Then-commissioner Roy Kramer first pioneered that model amid the SEC expansion that brought South Carolina and Arkansas into the league and created the need for an SEC football championship game in the early 1990s. It was revolutionary at the time, but with the league expanding to 16 teams, something new is required.

That “new” will almost certainly include some guarantees of permanent rivalries, but we’ll have to wait for the long-term solution to figure that out. (Sankey quipped not ensuring the Egg Bowl and Iron Bowl are played every year might lead to him being out as commissioner, so expect fixed annual matchups in some capacity.)

4. What’s happening with tampering in college football?

The scheduling discussion dominated headlines this week, but tampering continues to be prevalent in discussions around the conference.

Coaches and administrators have belied the issue for months. With the advent of the one-time transfer exemption and name, image and likeness deals tying into all of it, there’s plenty of complaining happening at the highest levels of the league.

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer half-jokingly alluded to tampering with a handful of his players who departed this offseason. Short of naming names and more tangible evidence of what’s happening, it feels like that may be the best approach to dealing with it for the time being.

5. NIL issues are still a major discussion in college sports

NIL has become as hot-button a topic as there is in college sports over the past year.

In theory, it was designed for players to make money in a above-board and logical way. However, allegations of pay-for-play structures and the increasing impact of collectives in the SEC and beyond has added fire to an already scorching flame.

The hope around the Hilton Sandestin this week was that Congress will step in and help standardize the regulations related to NIL nationwide as states continue to operate under varying laws that differ place-to-place.

South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner told The State this week he’s optimistic something can get done eventually. When? We’ll see.

6. South Carolina, SEC reps going to Washington, D.C.

Speaking of NIL, Tanner, Beamer and USC women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley are going on a lobbying mission in the nation’s capital next week.

Tanner told The State the plan is for his South Carolina cohort to join a slew of SEC administrators and coaches in D.C. to chat with lawmakers about NIL and what can be done to fix the fractured rules that have given legitimate advantages to schools in certain states.

The USC group will meet with lawmakers from the Palmetto State, in addition to a reception with representatives from the SEC footprint later in the day.

7. Nick Saban has some thoughts on college football players and their profits.

Last year, we headed to Florida steeped in the middle of the feud between Alabama’s Nick Saban and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher. Hard to believe that was only 12 months ago.

This year, Saban had a new pedestal to stand on as he sounded off on compensating college athletes.

“I have no problem with that,” Saban said of reinvesting growing profits in college football into the players. “Unionize it. Make it like the NFL. I mean, if it’s going to be the same for everyone, I think that’s better than what we have now. Because what we have now is we have some states and some schools in some states investing a lot more money in terms of managing their roster than others, and I think this is going to create a real competitive disadvantage for some in the future. And it’s also going to create an imbalance in the competitive nature of the sport — which isn’t good for the sport.”

A lot to chew on there, but Saban has been known to take the stand on major paradigm shifts in college football. This week was nothing new.

8. Gambling talk takes center stage in Florida.

Gambling has become an increasingly pressing topic in college sports in the wake of the Alabama baseball scandal that got head coach Brad Bohannon fired last month.

The league brought in Matt Holt, president of U.S. Integrity Inc. — an organization that helps ensure fairness in sports — to discuss the topic with coaches and league administrators. Sankey, too, addressed numerous questions about gambling, how it’s become more widely accepted in society at-large and what the league can do to stop situations like the one that played out in Tuscaloosa.

“As legalized sports gambling becomes acculturated in society,” he said, “We have to understand there will be changes.”

9. Field/court storming gets a new set of penalties.

The new penalties for field/court storming were lost a bit in the midst of Thursday’s scheduling announcement, but are also a big deal.

The SEC introduced a new sliding scale that will penalize schools when fans rush the playing surface and added the caveat those fines will go toward the opposing institution involved in such events.

The new financial penalties will be as follows:

• First offense — $100,000

• Second offense — $250,000

• Third and subsequent offenses — $500,000

10. SEC contemplating future of women’s basketball in Greenville.

On a non-football-related note, Sankey talked about the future of the SEC women’s basketball tournament in Greenville on Friday.

Sankey noted the league hasn’t had firm conversations about what to do with the tournament beyond the current contract that runs through the 2024-2025 season, but lauded the city for how it’s adopted the event in recent years.

“We’ve really been pleased with Greenville,” he said on Friday, the final day of SEC spring meetings. “Our membership is going to ask us to look just given it’s on the east side (of the league). Just at least be open to other locations. I think we’ll continue one way or another to have a relationship with Greenville.”

11. Dawn Staley, South Carolina and complaints about the NCAA tournament schedule.

I wrote about this earlier in the week, but South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley had some thoughts about the way the NCAA Tournament was set up between the Elite Eight and Final Four games.

Sankey acknowledged on Wednesday he had spoken to Staley about the schedule and how it, in practice, afforded lower-seeded teams an extra day of rest, despite the Gamecocks’ being the No. 1 overall seed.

This will be something to monitor if/when the NCAA addresses it.

12. What’s up with the SEC baseball tournament?

One other conference tournament note: It’s still up in the air what happens with the SEC baseball tournament after the 2024 season.

There have been rumblings for a couple years the league could look to move the event out of Hoover, Alabama — which has hosted every year outside of one since 1996. That said, Sankey noted the league should have a more clear picture of what it will do with baseball when athletic directors meet later this summer.

Given the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, it’s conceivable major league ballparks in Houston or Arlington, Texas, could be appealing.

13. A slight change to transfer portal rules.

The SEC announced on Friday it has amended its intraconference transfer rules slightly to more align with the NCAA’s transfer portal windows.

The shift functionally means football players who want to transfer within the conference, including graduate students, will have to enter the portal during the window that will open immediately after the national championship game.

This change will not apply to the spring window and has an exception for players that are part of programs that make a head coaching change.

14. Welcome, Texas and Oklahoma and goodbye to a 14-team league

The SEC placed banners for each conference school outside the Hilton Sandestin this week and, frankly, it still feels a bit like a fever dream that Texas and Oklahoma were a part of that signage.

The 2023 season will mark the final year in which the SEC consists of just 14 teams and, well, that will take some getting used to.

Representatives from Oklahoma and Texas made their way to Florida this week as non-voting members in the first real physical reminder both schools will be full-fledged SEC members come July 1, 2024.

The additions of the soon-to-be former Big 12 powers provided the impetus for that aforementioned new scheduling model. We’ll see what happens when the Sooners and Longhorns take the field in 2024, but their very existence at a weeklong event like spring meetings is a friendly reminder their arrival is coming sooner than later — no matter how weird it might be.