Big Ten, SEC change rules to ban pro athletes
Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry discuss the Big Ten and SEC finally prohibiting professional athletes from re-joining college teams and what it means for the NCAA in the future.
Video Transcript
Point I wanna make on this, 'cause we could talk for hours about it and we do wanna do a Big Ten preview, is, you know, I really think it's great that the Big Ten and the SEC stepped in here and created rules.
Agreed.
They did something.
They did.
And I know that they might get sued still, like the SEC might.
The, the LSU players and their lawyers are still talking a big game here.
But everyone has said, "Do something about this."
Yes.
And every athletic director and coach that I talk to, but especially all these ADs and administrators, they say that it's important to fight for what they wanna fight for.
Right.
Like, you pick what you wanna fight for, and then you fight it.
You cannot just cede ground and say, "Well, we'll probably get sued," or, "We might lose the lawsuit."
That's why the NCAA fights all these eligibility cases.
Like, they are- Right extremely invested in them, and it's important for them to fight them- So- no matter what the cost is gonna be.
And the conference is at the same point.
This to them is- Yes it's like wh- it's like the, the backlash to the sports gambling stuff with Brennan Sonsby.
Right.
And everyone's like, "This needs to be a red line, like, that you cannot cross."
It's the same thing here.
Pro player, like we know college sports is getting more professionalized, but taking a pro player who signed a contract with the NFL and then allowing them to play back in college, that is a bright red line.
So they're fighting for this.
And by the way, Joshua, I think that there is certainly, there, it's a different legal argument when you're fighting a conference that you opted into- Yes as a member- Absolutely voluntarily.
Yes.
And voted on these policies.
Yes.
And- Than it is with the NCAA, and they've had inconsistent applications of transfer rules and- Yes waivers and eligibility and all of these things.
So it's a different case, first of all.
But also, good on these conferences.
They've talked about self-governance.
They've said, "Hey, we want rules.
We wanna enforce these things."
Yes.
And here they are doing them.
Good for them.
You're getting, you're getting to everything that I, I wanted to say on that part of it.
The self-governance thing, this almost feels to me like a little bit of a trial run of, if we were to do this on our own- Yeah how would it go?
And I'm glad that they are, they're doing that.
Because the NCAA, as much as they're, they're trying to do what's right for the sport after so long of not doing it, they're just, they're getting sued, they're powerless, they can't do it.
So I like that.
The second thing you mentioned about the conferences doing it, I would be curious to see how these cases would look in court, because part of the issue- Me too.
Me too with the NCAA was it's a blanket rule.
It covers just about every school.
So when you, when they make a rule, it's basically the whole antitrust thing and, like, there's nowhere else to go.
And let's say the Sun Belt doesn't make a rule like this, you could argue, "Well, we're, we're not letting him do this here.
He can do this somewhere else, but he can't do it here."
And I think it's an interesting argument to make.
I- And then the Go ahead.
I would also argue that telling someone, they're not saying you can't add them.
They're just saying, "We'll penalize your head coach, and we'll fine you if you play them."
And that's the other part.
It's, it's not targeted toward the player.
It's not about their eligibility.
It's Exactly.
They're just saying, "We'll punish you if you play that person."
And, and we're not gonna punish the player.
We're going to punish the coach.
Yes.
And so I'm very curious how all of this is gonna go, because it's, it, it's nuanced.
I'm glad we're talking about it.
But this is, this is a little bit of a different thing than some of the other cases.
