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Meet the nobodies who are biggest somebodies in Trump college sports roundtable
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- Meet the nobodies who are biggest somebodies in Trump college sports roundtable
Look, everyone, it's Tiger Woods! And Nick Saban and the President of the United States and so many other heavy-hitting heroes coming together to fix college sports.
And none of them mean a damn thing.
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Except, that is, Jeff Gold, Jere Morehead and Donde Plowman.
Who are they, you ask? Merely three surface nobodies who are the biggest somebodies in President Trump 's scheduled Friday White House meeting to finally, mercifully, fix what's broken.
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But nothing gets done without the Big Ten and SEC signing off on it, and they're not exactly playing nice of late . Which brings us the the big three of the event, where the rubber meets we don't have to do a thing if we don't want to.
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Morehead, Georgia's president, is the most powerful president or chancellor in the SEC, and likely college sports. He's widely considered the most hands-on sports administrator in the nation.
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Gold, the longtime Nebraska chancellor, led the Big Ten through its return to play during the pandemic season, steering the league clear of a dolt former commissioner's idea of spring football and — get this — two seasons in eight months.
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Plowman, the Tennessee chancellor, is at the forefront of the push for collective bargaining, the one true answer — however it's massaged and managed into a plausible system — to gain control of pay for play and player movement.
You can have Tiger or Timmy or Condi Rice or Adam Silver (Adam Silver?). My money is on the Big Three ― Morehead, Gold and Plowman ― to make this thing work.
Because despite what you believe, despite how Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey have become the bad guys in this deal, they're simply herding cats. Or in this case, university presidents and chancellors who make every decision.
That's 18 from the Big Ten and 16 from the SEC, and those 34 men and women will be the sole reason college sports figures a way out of this mess. If it even does.
More to the point, the Big Three at the Trump meeting carry considerable weight within their university caucuses.
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There's a reason Tennessee athletic director Danny White has been publicly talking about the need to collectively bargain with players — which, until now, has been last resort, last chance. Well, here we are, everyone.
The last train is leaving the station.
If White is publicly talking about collective bargaining — again, it doesn't have to be collective bargaining as we know it — he's doing it because his boss (Plowman) signed off on it. Plowman will enter that meeting full of collective bargaining research from White and his staff.
That stand-your-ground move by White comes six years after Gold fought the Big Ten — and won. He wasn't buying the cancellation of the pandemic season, and threatened to play a full schedule without the Big Ten.
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Think about that: He was willing to go against his conference membership when dealing with the pandemic, possibly leading to Nebraska's expulsion had the Big Ten membership not eventually figured out the lunacy of not playing.
To say nothing of the potential lawsuits from injured players after playing two seasons in eight months (seriously, how dumb was that idea?).
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Then there's Morehead, the most powerful player in the most powerful conference in college sports. The conference that could, if it wanted to, break away and make billions as the most-watched product in college sports. By a long way.
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Morehead could bring the SEC presidents and chancellors together, and be part of the answer. Instead of being part of the problem.
Look, the SEC and Big Ten could survive in this ever-changing, eat what you kill world. It wouldn't be easy, and there would be annual fires to put out — some costing hundreds of millions of dollars in potential legal losses — but it could be done.
They could survive even without an antitrust exemption. Hell, they're doing it now.
But at what cost, and do they want to be seen as the two conferences that killed college sports as we know it?
Here's why this meeting could actually work, beyond how they eventually figure out the machinations of it all: Who blinks first? The SEC or the Big Ten?
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Be the first conference to join the other side, and you're forever seen as the conference that saved college sports. Be the conference that follows, and you're forever seen as being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the answer.
This isn't about Trump, though his bully pulpit helps. This isn't about Nick Saban and his championships, or Tony Dungy or an NFL owner or the reality that no players or player representatives have been asked to attend.
Nothing changes without the Big Ten and SEC saying it does.
And the three surface nobodies who are the biggest somebodies to finally making it happen.
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Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The most important people at Trump's college sports roundtable
