The SEC will assemble in a beachfront resort here this week, as it does around this time each year, for days of discussion, debate and decision-making.
The league’s annual spring meetings, which open Tuesday and continue through Friday, will draw the presidents, chancellors, athletic directors, football coaches, men’s and women’s basketball coaches and other officials from the 14 member schools.
Here are five topics sure to be on their minds:
1. Cost of attendance
In January, the SEC and the four other power conferences approved paying stipends to athletes, starting this fall, to cover cost-of-living expenses not included in scholarships. But now SEC coaches and administrators, as well as their counterparts in other leagues, are concerned the payments will turn into recruiting weapons.
The new rule caps the stipend at a school’s full cost of attendance beyond the tuition, fees, room, board and books covered in athletic scholarships. Because each school’s financial aid office calculates its own cost under federal government guidelines, the amount of allowable stipend varies sharply. In the SEC, the range is from $5,666 per year at Tennessee to $2,284 at Kentucky, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Georgia pegs its figure at $3,221.
Schools that calculate a higher cost of attendance can offer a larger stipend — a potentially significant recruiting advantage that Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity has called “an unintended consequence.”
What to do about it? That’ll be hashed out in Destin.
Some coaches and administrators wonder if the SEC can adopt guidelines that standardize the stipends within the conference, but that might pose legal issues. Others suggest setting a uniform, transparent policy for SEC members on how to communicate cost-of-attendance calculations to the league and to recruits, allowing apples-to-apples comparisons of stipends vs. expenses.
2. Satellite camps
The SEC has a rule that bans its football programs from holding camps for high school players far away from campus. While SEC coaches like their rule, they dislike the fact that Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 programs are not similarly encumbered and thus could gain a recruiting advantage. (The ACC has the same rule as the SEC.)
Several Big Ten programs have held or plan to hold “satellite” camps in SEC recruiting territory. Absent a conference policy to the contrary, NCAA rules permit the practice if the program is a guest of a host school, as Penn State was at a Georgia State camp last summer.
Alabama coach Nick Saban has called the traveling camps “ridiculous.”
SEC coaches this week will discuss two options: lifting their league’s rule, or pushing for NCAA legislation to ban the practice nationally. The SEC doesn’t want to do the former, but might if it ultimately fails to accomplish the latter.
3. Graduate transfers
The NCAA’s graduate transfer rule has morphed from its original intent, which was to allow a player who has earned a degree with eligibility remaining to play immediately at another school if he enrolls in a master’s program not offered by his former school. Graduate transfers have increased, particularly in men’s basketball and to a lesser extent in football, with the main motivation often appearing to be the pursuit of more playing time.
Whether that’s a problem or not is open to discussion, which the issue will get in Destin.
The SEC also may revisit a conference rule that requires members to seek waivers from the league office before accepting graduate transfers who have had significant disciplinary issues at their former school. Some want to scrap that rule, while Georgia wants to expand it to non-graduate transfers who have been dismissed from their former schools for certain offenses, including domestic violence.
4. SEC Network
The SEC hasn’t been shy about labeling its TV network, which debuted last summer in partnershp with ESPN, “the most successful launch of a cable network in history.” But the conference has been mum publicly about how much money SEC Network is generating.
A glimpse of the dollars from the network, as well as those from the new College Football Playoff, could come this week when the conference reveals its annual distribution to member schools, which expect a significant increase.
5. Transition ahead
SEC commissioner Mike Slive, 74, will preside over the spring meetings for the 13th and final time. He will retire July 31 and be succeeded by Greg Sankey, an SEC executive throughout Slive’s tenure and chief operating officer since 2012.
The pending transition will be felt this week.
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