All we hear is how good and how deep the SEC and Big Ten are, and how everyone else would lose so many games for being in them. This mindset, in fact, has even led to them threatening to break away to form their own conference.
Kentucky fans often side with the SEC (and even Big Ten) when it comes to competition, but not every decision those conferences make is amiable for the teams within them.
They both strong-armed their way into creating the College Sports Commission, without bothering to enforce it to any degree. So much so, now, that one AD has had enough. Iowa State's Jamie Pollard spoke his mind:
"The four commissioners spent a lot of money creating the CSC. Then, to have two of the conferences not want to adhere to it is perplexing to me, because then, why did we spend the money? If you didn't want rules, then why did you create this entity? That's what's frustrating to me, the same people that say they want rules only want rules if they don't apply to them... I said it three years ago, let 'em break away. I would turn it around and say we should break away from them. Let them go, but they have to go in all their sports and see how fun it is to play baseball, softball, and track when it's just the 20 of you. That's what I think we should do..."Jamie Pollard
The CSC is the brainchild of the SEC and the Big Ten and is a commission built to review all NIL deals to make sure they meet fair market value. For example, if "Jim" signs a $10 million deal to go out and signs one single autograph, that isn't exactly fair and would be looked at as play for pay, which is supposed to be illegal.
Surviving Without the NCAA
But the CSC is taking too long to review deals for the time being; they don't have the ability to get through all of them and deals consistently fall through. This has caused the SEC and Big Ten, in an even more controversial move, to want to go their own way entirely. Given Pollard's annoyance, it sounds like he and the rest of the country would be just fine with that.
Then again, it's highly unlikely that an SEC/Big Ten split-off conference would be able to survive without the rest of the involved teams. Like Pollard mentioned, the lack of NCAA Tournaments and inability to schedule anyone outside of that conference would be a nightmare for smaller sports like volleyball and softball, among others.
If the two best conferences broke away to play football against each other, on the other hand, it may generate a ton of unique interest. But, at the same time, it wouldn't offset the money lost for the television and conference deals from the NCAA on the whole.
Survival is definitely possible, but thriving is a different and much less favorable concern. Instead of trying to convince other teams and conferences to rebel, the SEC and Big Ten may be better off trying to work around where they're at right now.
If that means climbing down from a high horse, so be it.
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