What I learned from SEC media days: Tiers, cash budgets and a 30-team Playoff pitch

New York Times

6 hours ago

ATLANTA — The College Football Hall of Fame serves to celebrate all of the sport. So even with SEC media days taking over the building this week, reminders abounded of others' accomplishments: Displays for Ohio State's national championship and reigning Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter of Colorado, hard to miss as coaches, players and commissioner Greg Sankey went to do radio and podcast interviews.
Advertisement
In case that didn't bring home the message, there were questions to coaches asking whether the SEC, after failing to make the past two national championship games, had pressure to 'get back to the top.'
When Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz got that question Thursday, he took a dramatic pause.
'The top?' he said, quizzically. 'The top as in the number of draft picks in the NFL? The top as in most viewership? Overall top, deepest conference in college football?'
Those have always been talking points in this conference: Depth, ratings and draft picks. But they're especially necessary this year.
'I still feel that the SEC top to bottom is as strong as you'll find. We experienced that last year,' said Alabama's Kalen DeBoer, whose team lost at Vanderbilt.
This is talkin' season, as Steve Spurrier put it. Everyone is optimistic, everyone had a great offseason, everyone has a chance to have a really, really good season.
But after listening and talking to coaches and players on all 16 teams, the takeaway is that more than half the conference has a realistic chance to contend for the College Football Playoff. There's evidence beyond the SEC for that: Indiana and SMU out of nowhere last year. There's evidence within the SEC: South Carolina went from being picked 13th in last year's media poll to finishing three spots out of the CFP.
The SEC will release this year's media poll on Friday. Here is how this reporter sees it, eschewing the specificity of rankings for the safety of tiers:
Clear favorite: Texas
The Longhorns aren't a perfect team, and Arch Manning may not be an immediate star. But he also may be, and the program has plenty of talent, a decent schedule, and two years of CFP experience.
'There's a real sense of hunger on our team right now,' Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. 'They're probably tired of being close. They want to reach the summit here.'
Advertisement
Clear second: Georgia
It was weird this week: The defending SEC champions, who won the conference's last two national titles, were an afterthought at an event an hour from their campus. Georgia was a less compelling story because it is just expected to be good now, and didn't have a recent rash of arrests to ask Kirby Smart about.
The main question for the Bulldogs isn't quarterback Gunner Stockton. It's the offensive line, and to a lesser degree, the defensive line. Smart built his colossus along the trenches, and that play slipped in the last two years. Otherwise, though, there's the usual array of future NFL players on the roster, and unlike last year, Georgia plays its hardest games at home: Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas.
The most likely other contenders
Alabama is loaded but has an unknown quantity at quarterback, and is coming off a disappointing (for Alabama) season. LSU has potentially the best quarterback in the conference, Garrett Nussmeier, and plenty of other talent, but is the defense better? Ole Miss lost a lot but still has enough to be dangerous. South Carolina could ride LaNorris Sellers even further than last year.
The upstarts
Florida could keep the momentum from last year's 4-0 finish. Oklahoma is primed for a big move, especially if QB John Mateer is the real deal. Auburn could do the same if QB Jackson Arnold is better than he was at Oklahoma.
Still around, don't forget
Missouri has a new QB and doesn't have Luther Burden anymore, but Drinkwitz has built Mizzou into a steady contender. Texas A&M is hoping to build on a solid first season under Mike Elko. Tennessee may have lost its CFP hopes when Nico Iamaleava transferred, but Josh Heupel's team has surprised before.
The rest
Arkansas and Vanderbilt may be decent teams, occasionally dangerous, as they were last year.
Advertisement
Kentucky doesn't look great, but Mark Stoops has earned the right to not be written off.
And then there's Mississippi State.
As for what else we learned this week:
It seemed the SEC was set on supporting a 16-team Playoff model that didn't include multiple automatic bids per conference. Sankey basically confirmed that on Monday. But there was at least one dissenting voice: Missouri's Drinkwitz.
'This isn't going to help me with our commissioner,' Drinkwitz said Thursday, when he was asked what CFP model he favored.
Drinkwitz outlined his preferred model, which resembles the 4-4-2-2-1 automatic bid format favored by the Big Ten. But Drinkwitz presented it as essentially a 30-team field, because each conference would have play-in games to determine the automatic bids. The idea has been bandied about since earlier this year, but Drinkwitz put his name on it, which few, if any, have done thus far:
Drinkwitz admitted his math might not add up. But his main point was that 30 teams would enter what is now conference championship weekend with a chance to compete for the title.
'I think we should go back and try to find more ways to include teams,' Drinkwitz said. 'How do we get more people involved. Because that's better for the players. That's better for the player experience to have more people involved in the potential to play for a championship. That's better for the fan bases. I think we all would agree the four games on home campuses was a win for college football. We need to expand that opportunity, that energy and excitement.'
There's another reason Drinkwitz favors this: It takes decisions out of the selection committee. Many SEC coaches and athletic directors were already upset with the perception that schedule strength wasn't factored in enough by last year's committee when deciding seven at-large spots. Keeping a committee while expanding it to decide on 11 at-large spots would be 'ridiculous,' Drinkwitz said.
Advertisement
'It's based on implicit bias,' he said. 'And it only benefits the top 25 blue bloods who are consistently ranked in the top 25.'
The era of revenue sharing arrived on July 1, via the House settlement. Going by what coaches said this week, it remains a work in progress.
Football teams are expected to get a majority of the $20.5 million that athletic departments are now paying players. Players can get money on top of that via name, image and likeness deals that have to be approved by a third party operated by the Deloitte accounting firm.
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin was already skeptical. Asked if the idea was for a hard salary cap, Kiffin said, 'I think that's what we attempted. Doesn't seem like that's working very well.'
Kiffin didn't get into specifics, and neither did any coach. LSU coach Brian Kelly did say that at a speaking engagement, 'every question about the NIL was trying to find a way around it.'
Florida coach Billy Napier called revenue sharing 'a cash budget,' rather than a cap. Napier also said there's clarity needed on the role of collectives, which third-party NIL deals will be approved, and — in what could be a big loophole — what is legal for players 'pre-enrollment.' In other words, whether teams could pay high school players to commit and enroll as a way around the rules. As in, what happened pre-NIL.
'This is like moving into a new house. Like you're learning, and there's a few things you got to get fixed,' Napier said. 'It's better than what we used to have. So it's not about perfection here. It's progress. I think you can get some more clarity, in that as we go every week, every month, we'll get more clarity.'
The other complication is that teams are supposed to provide their revenue-sharing budget, including player agreements, to the College Sports Commission for the fiscal year beginning around Aug. 1. But football's fiscal year includes two different teams.
Advertisement
'I'm not sure who came up with that one,' Napier said. 'So literally half of the team is on one fiscal year, half of the next fiscal year. … Then you have multiyear agreements with incoming players and then players you're working on retention plans for. So it's a big math problem. There's some strategy in there in how you manipulate the money.'
There is consensus within the conference: Everyone is tired of the debate over whether the SEC should play eight or nine conference games. Everyone also seems annoyed that playing eight conference games has become a means to ding the SEC.
'It is absolutely, fully, 100 percent correct that in the SEC we play eight conference games while some others play nine conference games. Never been a secret,' Sankey said, before adding that detractors often don't point out that the SEC mandates everyone play a ninth game against a power-conference team. And several play a 10th.
Sankey also said, and was echoed later by Kiffin, that it was doubtful anybody in another conference would prefer to play an eight-game SEC schedule than a nine-game schedule in their conference.
'I handed out a bunch of stats that caused a stir in Destin that showed there is a rigor here that is unique,' Sankey said. 'But we're going to continue to evaluate whether increasing the number of conference football games is appropriate for us.'
Thus the SEC schedule saga goes on. But for anyone reading the tea leaves, almost every SEC team has only three nonconference games scheduled for 2026. (Mississippi State is an exception.)
If the SEC does go to nine games, Sankey did confirm that each team's three annual opponents would not be permanent. The schedules would be on a four-year cycle, every team having three annual rivals and rotating everyone else so they play twice every four years. But Sankey said there would be 'look-ins,' so the three annual rivalries could be revisited.