Slive Should Have Gained Support for His Agenda from SEC Head Coaches before Making it Public

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Jacob Bunn

Last Wednesday, SEC Commissioner Mike Slive gave an address to assembled media members from around the nation to begin the 2011 edition of SEC Media Days. This speech by Slive focused on college athletics as a whole and how he believes improvements can be made.

The conference over which Slive presides is currently enjoying a streak of five straight BCS Championships. He could have taken the stage last week in Hoover and proclaimed that the SEC had arrived as the all-time standard for college athletics. He could have taken the opportunity to gloat over the unprecedented feat SEC football has accomplished. No one could have blamed him if he had decided to turn his monologue into an SEC infomercial. But he didn’t. Instead, he admitted in front of the entire media world that college football has some serious issues that need addressing.

“As we look forward to the upcoming season, as anxious as we are and as excited as we are, we don’t have the luxury of acting as if it’s business as usual,” Slive said. “That’s been made clear by the headlines emanating from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Gulf to the Great Lakes. As NCAA president Mark Emmert has observed, the events giving rise to those headlines indicate that intercollegiate athletics has lost the benefit of the doubt.”

The Commissioner admitted that his agenda was not a solution to every issue that faces intercollegiate athletics, but he said it did identify many of those problems.

One of the proposals made by the commissioner is to have athletic scholarships compensate the entire cost of attendance to a school. This proposal has been reiterated by some of his peers and has seemed to be widely accepted as a reasonable action moving forward.

Another thing Slive introduced was the potential of scholarships being four-year awards. This is an area where SEC head coaches almost unanimously disapprove. Each head coach was asked at his press conference about the proposals by the Commissioner, and just about every one of them singled out the multi-year scholarship assertion as a bad idea.

Commissioner Slive also said he would like to see the academic standards for athletic competition elevated. One specific way he proposes to do this is to raise the minimum grade point average required for a student-athlete during his first semester of college from 2.0 to 2.5.

The commissioner also articulated that he feels the rules regarding recruiting should be redefined. He believes that some of the current rules are outdated and could use some serious fine-tuning.

With this unprecedented address, Commissioner Slive has really made the first move toward redefining the current system, which appears broken. This has really put the onus on other prominent figures in the world of NCAA athletics to offer their own suggestions.

Logistically, though, some of the ideas put forth by Commissioner Slive simply do not appear feasible. I am especially referring to the multi-year scholarship proposal. There are a tremendous amount of pitfalls associated with obligating a student-athlete to remain at a school, and vice versa, for a multi-year period of time.

Slive said that his agenda to restructure the enforcement process contained the support of NCAA president Mark Emmert and NCAA vice president of enforcement Julie Roe Lach. Having the NCAA’s top brass on board certainly adds credibility to the plan. I do think it would have been in the best interest of the Commissioner, though, to have discussed this plan with the twelve head coaches over which he presides before making it public. From the indications given by each head coach, that did not take place.

I think the Commissioner makes some great points and genuinely desires to see college athletics rise above some of the unsightly issues that are currently plaguing it. But if he wants his proposals to have any impact at all, I believe he must first win the support of SEC football head coaches. And because he did not do that, his plan drew criticism from some notable names.

South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier severely chastised the Commissioner’s idea about awarding multi-year scholarships.

“That’s a terrible idea, Commissioner,” Spurrier said. “Everybody has to earn your way in life. You earn your way in life. Go from there.”

Spurrier was talking about how a player must earn his keep on a football team rather than receive a multi-year deal at the outset. His sentiment was echoed by several other SEC head coaches, who also feel strongly about that issue. One of those joining him in dissent was Alabama head coach Nick Saban.

“I don’t fully understand the purposes of some of these things,” Saban said. “I would like to have a discussion and dialogue about how these things would impact and affect, you know, college football.”

Saban was addressing the lack of communication about these proposals from the Commissioner.

It is obvious that Slive is trying to do the right thing with his agenda, and I commend the Commissioner of the SEC, the league that has dominated the college football scene in recent years, for being proactive about finding solutions to the gaudy problems that are glaring in intercollegiate athletics right now. But, I think some of the things he has proposed would open the door for more chaos and scrutiny in the sport. Most of all, I think Commissioner Slive needs to discuss his ideas with the twelve head coaches in his league and gain their support. Otherwise, I do not believe his agenda will ever gain proper traction.

Email Jacob at jacob@bunnsports.com and follow him on Twitter at @JacobBunn