the BigAmateurism monologues

January 20th marked the official beginning of SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey’s new role as the unofficial czar of college sports when the NCAA membership voted to ratify the new NCAA constitution. As co-chair of the Division I Board of Director’s Transformation Committee, Sankey (and co-chair Julie Cromer, athletics director at Ohio University) will utilize Division I’s new authorities to operate largely independent of the NCAA national office bureaucracy. On Friday, January 21st, Sankey and Cromer sat for a podcast interview in the NCAA’s “Social Series” podcast. This episode analyzes Sankey’s and Cromer’s comments and how they framed the purpose for, and work of, the Transformation Committee. Sankey’s new role poses complex messaging challenges as he tries to reconcile the tension between the public face of the Committee and the realities of the regulatory and legal environment in college sports in 2022. Those realities rest squarely on the interests of Power 5 football—an obvious truth obscured by Sankey’s comments.