Iowa State Athletic Director Makes Major Statement about State of Big Ten and SEC
Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard voiced his true opinion on the state of college sports and the current state of the conference structures.
On Tuesday, Pollard was asked about the Big Ten and SEC threatening to leave the conference. His response?
"Let them go."
Pollard continued in a very long answer to say that "we should break away from them," and "Quit threatening... see how fun it is."
A true statement was made about two of the goliaths in the sport, but truthfully, it is so long overdue. The Big Ten and the SEC have become bigger than the entire NCAA, and they truly have no accountability; there is no governing body that is big enough to enforce any rules against them.
The perfect example of this is the earnings of each roster in the top 25. Fifteen of the top 17 teams in terms of total roster value are from either the Big Ten or the SEC. The two that aren't are Miami and Notre Dame.
Furthermore, the 17th-ranked roster in terms of value is the oil tycoon, Texas Tech. Clemson is just the second ACC team on the list and only the second in the top-25.
The bigger storyline in all of this is the roster values. This year, the NCAA came to an agreement that universities have a cap of $20.5M to pay their roster from straight revenue share.
These rosters are now worth upwards of $40 million with little to no signs of stopping. There are no rules or governance in place to stop all of this. It won't take long until there is an $80 million or $100 million roster in the NCAA somewhere.
The Big Ten and the SEC have been dangling departure over the head of the entire NCAA for five years now, and now it seems like member programs are fed up with the direction that all of this is going. Smaller schools cannot compete with the likes of Ohio State, Oregon, Texas, Georgia, and Alabama.
There is enough blame to go all the way around from the top to the bottom of the NCAA, and the middle-tier schools have had enough, and they are likely correct in how they feel.
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