High-ranking members of the SEC are fighting for name, image, and likeness regulations, including LSU head coach Brian Kelly.
Kelly joined Alabama’s Nick Saban and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey in Washington, D.C. earlier this month to meet with lawmakers to make a case for federal assistance in regulating how college athletes can earn money off their fame.
Kelly said changes need to happen sooner rather than later.
“College athletics is at a crossroads if this doesn’t get fixed,” Kelly recently told ESPN.
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Head coach Brian Kelly of the LSU Tigers on the sidelines during the Arkansas Razorbacks game on Nov. 12, 2022, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. (Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
“We needed to do something,” Kelly continued. “There needed to be some publicity behind it. There needed to be at least an education at the committee level where they had more than just what California is trying to do.”
“Look, I think, more than anything else, they hear it now – that college sports is in jeopardy,” Kelly addd. “It’s not just football. I didn’t have to be there. [Saban] didn’t have to be there. We’ll be OK. Yeah. At the end of the day, the big schools, the big oil companies, they all survive.”
Kelly thought the meeting was productive, and hoped a bill could be proposed by August that could garner support.
“If there’s nothing on the floor or in committee by the end of July, then we’ll know that they can’t produce something,” he said.
Coach Brian Kelly during the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl between the LSU Tigers and the Purdue Boilermakers on Jan. 2, 2023, at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida. (David Rosenblum/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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“There’s a lot that goes on between our campuses and D.C. And so this is an opportunity to focus on athletics and some of the pressures that we’re facing. To communicate that, given the realities in college athletics, Congress is the place that can fix the issues we have,” Sankey said at the time of the meeting.
Saban specifically pushed for the creation of some type of union at the collegiate level before heading to the nation’s capital.
“I have no problem,” he said. “I mean, unionize it. Make it like the NFL. It’s going to be the same for everyone. I think that’s better than what we have now.”
Saban argued that the disparity in compensation in the college ranks was at risk of becoming worse in the future due to the current model that exists in the sport.
LSU Tigers talk with head coach Brian Kelly during the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl against the Purdue Boilermakers on Jan. 2, 2023, in Orlando. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
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“Everything they do in the NFL is to create what? Parity,” Saban said. “If they can have everybody going into the 17th week of the season 8-8, that would be like a dream for the NFL. You think there is disparity right now in college football? There’s going to be more in the future.”
