Biggest Question at SEC Meetings Could be Question for College Sports

Coaches start weighing in at Destin on NIL solving lawsuits, but leave lots of uncertainty

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is going to have another issue to deal with as questions getting opinions from coaches on future for walk-on players / Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — During the SEC's annual excuse for a paid vacation in Destin, Fla., for spring meetings, an issue came up that primarily affects college football coaches. They have the most number of players and while an NIL settlement solves some lawsuits, nobody knows if it will affect who gets paid.

It is still yet to be determined mainly for players who walk-on without a scholarship. Scores of college football coaches like Dabo Swinney and Will Muschamp played college football without getting a free ride. No one has resolved if these players doing a lot of running and sweating are going to get a nickel.

Will the number of players even allowed to be reduced? The football coaches started weighing in on this with a similar voice.

"It's absolutely against college football, what it stands for and what it's about," new Texas A&M coach Mike Elko told Pete Thamel of ESPN. "That would be a major problem. That's something's really bad for the sport."

Everybody wanted the players to get paid from what is probably an often-overblown idea of just how much money is available to each school. There will never be a mandatory distribution. Stipulating a specific amount over a fixed period of time is all schools can do. Every school has a different amount to work with and now we have private "collectives," which essentially take everything done under the table in the past, above board.

Kirby Smart of Georgia sees roster reductions that eliminate walk-on players hurting high school football. That could hurt Arkansas football, too. Brandon Burlsworth became a third-round NFL draft choice after walking on from Harrison. He always wanted to be a Razorback. There is a long history of players who spent their high school careers dreaming of playing for the Hogs.

Clark Lea at Vanderbilt was a walk-on player. Steve Sarkisian at Texas has a son that's a current walk-on at Texas. You can almost take it as guaranteed schools are going to be against reducing the number of walk-ons. Some schools in the SEC have tried to limit walk-ons in the past for football and head coaches have created massive upheaval over it.

Alabama coach Kelen DeBoer told ESPN he's had rosters as small as 105 players and as many as 135. They do limit scholarships to 85 (and a lot of people want to increase that), but athletics directors have a bigger problem. How do they factor in paying walk-ons? Zero may not be an answer that might last until the first fully-padded summer practice when they get pounded by guys making hundreds of thousands of dollars. The August heat in Arkansas won't help that.

It's a dilemma Hunter Yurachek can add to the list, one which is getting to be a multi-page collection of things at this point. It likely won't be shrinking much anytime soon. Multiply that by 15 and it's Greg Sankey's problem.

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