S
SEC Sports
This is an opinion column.
Greg Byrne had a few things to say Thursday.
And if there’s anything I’ve learned from covering Alabama’s athletics director for the past nine years, these comments are not off the cuff.
There’s always an angle.
Every talking point has a purpose and carefully crafted messaging. It’s my job to decode these dispatches and read between the lines of these screeds for you, the loyal reader.
It’s quite fun, if you’re curious.
So, let’s get to it.
There were two main headlines that popped related to Byrne on the second day of April. One dealt with the future of the SEC’s football championship game.
Byrne would prefer there not to be one. Kaput.
“I think the ship has sailed,” Byrne said in an interview with the national news outlet, USA TODAY.
He knew that would get play and it did. The headline, already juiced on a large platform like USA TODAY, was quickly picked up by others nationally. Many fine ones.
It must be said that this esteemed columnist made the same determination after witnessing the lifeless corpse of a once-hallowed game play exactly zero role in the College Football Playoff race.
Regardless, the same message from Alabama’s athletics director carries a little more weight. The Crimson Tide won 11 of the 33 played.
That was then. Byrne said this is now and the utility of that early December afternoon in Atlanta is a lot like the Georgia Dome.
Bulldozed and repurposed.
So, why make this headline now?
Probably the same reason Byrne made his other notable comment of the day about NIL and those who interpret the rules loosely.
If 3-year-old thoroughbreds are jockeying for the first Saturday in May, ADs in the SEC are doing the same for the last Tuesday in May. That’s when the league’s spring meetings will commence on the sandy shores near Destin.
Everyone’s eager to be the most influential voice in those Gulf-side conference rooms, and Byrne’s not there for a tan.
So, he seeded the field, so to speak, with a talking point after introducing new Alabama women’s basketball coach Pauline Love.
Byrne met with writers after the on-camera news conference to discuss the hire further. As they were wrapping up, Byrne asked reporters if they wanted to ask him about the current state of college sports.
Full disclosure, I wasn’t in the room, but co-worker Matt Stahl provided the audio of the meeting.
This was vintage Byrne.
He had something to say and wasn’t leaving the room full of notebooks and recorders without saying it.
Essentially, he questioned if those who might be ignoring new rules on player compensation should be kicked out of conferences.
“We’re going to see, I think, a potential crossroads, on whether schools should be allowed to participate in conferences if they are choosing to not follow the rules,” Byrne said.
That’s interesting.
One could read that in a few different ways.
First, it’s an extreme opening offer as part of the negotiation/conversation that will be part of these spring meetings.
Recall that Byrne once suggested forfeits should be a punishment for excessive field/court storming violations. Instead, the league upped the fine to $500,000 for each storming.
Secondly, the SEC isn’t looking to blow up the cash explosion of its current arrangement by expelling its most profitable members. Byrne didn’t name names, but he’s not talking about the Mississippi States of the world.
It also says a little more about where Alabama fits within the league’s current economic hierarchy.
In the past week alone, headlines paint an ominous picture regarding Alabama rivals. Like the one about LSU’s $40 million football roster and donor momentum building behind Lane Kiffin, or another about Tennessee basketball prepping to spend $10 million-plus on its squad.
These are the kinds of numbers that fall in the zone Byrne is questioning. He argues that the House settlement set firm limits on how much revenue could be shared and how NIL deals would be regulated.
Of course, the $20.5 million cap on revenue share is the baseline for each of these high-level schools. The time-honored tradition of finding ways around the rules -- or at least the gray areas open for interpretation -- remains.
Alabama hasn’t been one of the biggest players in that realm in this new age of the athletics arms race. That’s no secret.
It’s just an interesting day when the Alabama AD is calling to level the playing field after having an edge in previous eras/economic models.
Not that Byrne’s wrong, just a notch on the timeline of these transformative times.
Hard to say we predicted a day where the school with the most SEC championship wins called for its elimination within hours of suggesting expulsion of league members.
Yet here we are.
And we’ll see how much weight Byrne’s words carry late next month at the panhandle conclave of SEC power brokers.
