Greg Sankey addresses possible changes coming to transfer portal, NIL

Over the past year, the landscape of collegiate athletics has been completely altered. With the emergence of the NCAA Transfer Portal and players having the ability to profit off of their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), the entire game has been changed. But the changes regarding the transfer portal and NIL issues are far from over.

On Friday, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey joined The Paul Finebaum Show, where he elaborated on the issues with the transfer portal and NIL, and painted an interesting picture on how those issues are going to be resolved.

“So from a transfer standpoint – our transformation committee is looking at the transfers,” Sankey said when asked about where things are with the transfer portal and NIL. “So let’s just be clear with our language. If we went back five years, you and I would likely be talking about restrictions placed on young people who want to move from school A to school B. Or, they had to serve a year of residence in like five sports, and in two dozen other sports, those student athletes didn’t have to serve a year of residence before they played.

“So literally, college sports has transformed what happens to transfer student athletes. Now what we’re hearing is that petulance went too far, we need to moderate a bit. I think we’re going to have to be careful in recognizing there’s likely space to have more guidelines, or more guardrails is the more frequently used term around how people transfer. When the timing takes place, we’ve tried to be careful about inter-conference transfers. So we’re working through that. I think between now and August we’ll be able to say there’s either the ability to manage differently or this current system is what it is.”

Sankey: NIL is ‘immensely more complex’ than the transfer portal issues

While the issues with the transfer portal are important, NIL is extremely multi-faceted with a number of other factors to consider. NIL issues go as deep as state and federal legislations, which limit what the NCAA can truly do or change.

“On Name, Image and Likeness, that’s immensely more complex,” said Sankey. “There’s litigation in that space for really the first time in the history of college sports. We’ve seen states say that we’re not going to wait for the NCAA to change or we’re not going to allow you to change, we’re going to affect the change in our own state legislation. That happened last year right on the heels of a Supreme Court decision that said we and the NCAA has to be overly careful about being overly restrictive with our rules. Now the irony is you’re seeing states that acted to adopt legislation step back and say, well we’re not going to regulate that space, it’s the state level.”

Moving forward, Sankey knows that solving the issues with the transfer portal and NIL won’t be easy. Right now, things are tense as everyone works to come to a resolution that benefits everyone involved. But Sankey also understands that being uncomfortable now is worth it if it means getting to that right resolution.

“So that causes the need for the Division I board of directors to re-engage and say this is not the healthy space,” Sankey said. “This isn’t traditional college sports. So we’re trying to make all of these decisions within the context of federal and state legislative activity and interest and litigation. We have to exercise great care, and that doesn’t produce easy results. That produces tense coaches conversations, difficult coaches meetings, and the fact is we’re likely going to be uncomfortable for a while as we go through this transformational period. And that’s going to be okay. We’ve got to work to get to the right side for the right outcome on these issues.”