Beautiful Speech Commissioner Sankey, but Congress is Useless, Especially Right Now

SEC leader's passionate plea for solution to college athletic's NIL problems created by various state legislatures will be ignored on Capitol Hill

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – An hour or two before SEC media days officially kicked off Monday morning, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey hinted he might be bringing a bit of meat and potatoes to the usual fluff that typically fills the annual State of the Conference address. He bemoaned his time at the podium this year would be much longer than usual.

What followed later as he addressed a packed room consisting of reporters who cover a conference that has evolved into the most powerful entity in all of college sports was a finely crafted, impassioned speech on how lawmakers have failed college athletes as it pertains to the ever evolving world of name, image and likeness. It issued scathing reprimands of state legislatures creating self-serving laws aimed at making it as easy as possible for their favorite college sports teams to purchase players rather than thinking about the athletes themselves.

"Our student athletes deserve something better than a patchwork of state laws that support their name, image and likeness activity, if support is the right word," Sankey said. "Our student athletes deserve something better than a race to the bottom at the state legislature level as efforts are made to create what are perceived as a competitive edge through state laws that are not overseen."

Sanky described a seedy world created by greedy politicians that unleashes men and women just a shade above the most disgusting of criminals looking for ways to defraud young men and women simply hoping to live out their dreams and not go hungry while doing it.

"Future student athletes, those who right now might be 15, 16, or 17 years old, they deserve something better than to need to sort through a fully unregulated marketplace, being approached by individuals who present themselves as something they may not be," Sankey said. "Where anyone can purchase card stock and run it through a printer and call themselves an agent on a business card and then engage in making offers to young people that are neither transparent, that do not include protections that many of us would expect to be normal. That makes it difficult for young people to both understand and navigate this free-for-all as they try to make both life guiding and life changing decisions."

Sankey went on to say he is unaware of any states willing to actually enforce their laws. In addition to creating a financial wild, wild west built upon the backs of teenagers, lawmakers have handcuffed the NCAA and conferences like the SEC from creating any sort of uniformity that might level the playing field while eliminating confusion for its athletes. That, unfortunately, has left Sankey to appeal to the one body on the planet that is least likely to do anything about it — Congress.

"If states will not enforce the laws, and states are going to prohibit the NCAA or conferences from enforcing these reasonable policies, Congressional action is then the only way to provide a national uniform standard for name, image and likeness activity and to draw the lines around the boundaries that have simply become pay-for-play," Sankey said. "Uniformity will ensure a high school student and his or her family do not have to investigate potentially dozens of different state laws or university policies to figure out how they can be active in this name, image and likeness world."

Despite the moving oratory performance, everyone who watched knows Sankey's pleas are dead in the water. The only common ground for members of Congress is the only person they each serve is themselves. Unless a college athlete's name, image and likeness is going to enhance the coffers of the Congressperson's own name, image and likeness, it's not going to get considered. 

Anyone who has ever contacted a Congressperson about a legitimate issue knows this firsthand. Reach out to a representative about the need to require grocery stores to have at least one manned cash register open to help those who physically struggle to or can't scan their own groceries, something that would be both beneficial and should be nonpartisan, and the best that can be hoped for is a generic form e-mail from a staffer who may or may not have read what you wrote. No giant check in hand, no need to be heard, although there will be plenty of opportunities to donate coming your way.

However, even if the SEC's NIL concerns did find a way to financially impact the back pockets of Congress, this is an election year. Representatives rarely make an effort to do work for the good of the people, but this time of year the only work to be done is performatory culture war type stuff that fires up one side of America to hate the other. 

Helping the local quarterback and his star basketball player sister avoid having to weed out all the sinister predators looking to latch on by pretending to be an agent doesn't make Bill on the west side of town hate Julia on the south side, so it will never get a moment's thought. 

Sankey may not even be able to get all of his coaches on board. When it came up later in the day, each coach awkwardly chose to avoid saying much of anything. Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said it wasn't an issue for him to comment upon, choosing to leave it up to university officials to sort out before slowly thanking a long list of politicians who did all they could to make it easier for him to pay players to play for him than it is for a lot of schools.

Even still, Sankey drove home his point, no matter how fruitless it will be in the end. Even he couldn't hide the disappointment in his voice that Congress is his only hope. He had no choice but to acknowledge that being left to rely on the federal legislature means help will likely never come.

"The reality is only Congress can fully address the challenges facing college athletics," Sankey said. "The NCAA cannot fix all of these issues. The courts cannot resolve all of these issues. The states cannot resolve all these issues, nor can the conferences. Whether Congressional action is achievable is a matter of debate. Much debate."

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