ROSEMONT, Ill. — Within Big Ten headquarters in this Chicago suburb this week, the industry’s most powerful leaders gathered: the Division I conference commissioners.
But next month, in Nashville, Tennessee, perhaps an equally influential group convenes: the Big Ten and SEC athletic directors.
In what is viewed as a continuation of their announced partnership in February, the top school administrators from the two most powerful NCAA conferences are scheduled to jointly meet, according to those familiar with the plans.
The meeting is a significant and historic occurrence, believed to be one of the few joint gatherings of athletic directors from two major conferences in NCAA history. Amid a transformational period within the industry, the meeting comes at a sensitive time within college sports, as the Big Ten and SEC have distanced themselves financially from the rest of the industry in a way that strikes fear, for some, in their coalescence.
However, those briefed on the meeting do not expect impactful decisions to be made and only believe this to be a next step in a partnership that the two conferences entered six months ago with the creation of a joint board.
Athletic directors are expected to begin discussion about a range of topics that they have mostly, so far, kept within their individual leagues. Those topics include the House settlement case, a new third-party (not NCAA) enforcement model, the future of the College Football Playoff format and — most noteworthy of them all — a regular season and postseason scheduling arrangement.
Commissioners of the leagues, SEC’s Greg Sankey and Big Ten’s Tony Petitti, are both expected to join the AD meeting as well as high-ranking conference staff members.
From the outside, the scheduled meeting is perhaps more symbolic in nature than anything else — two groups,…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/sec-big-ten-officials-to-meet-on-cfp-format-house-case-scheduling-agreement-153032496.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-09-26 15:30:32
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