Storylines for 2024 SEC spring meetings (2024)

Here's a not-so-bold prediction: the conversation this week is going to be dominated by the fallout from the House v. NCAA settlement.

The $2.8 billion settlement in the House v. NCAA case serves as back-pay damages to former Division I athletes going back to 2016 for lost name, image, and likeness earning opportunities. The plan is for the damages to be paid out over the course of 10 years via a combination of NCAA reserve funds and reductions in future revenue distributions to conferences.

The NCAA is responsible for 40% of the settlement, and the remaining 60% will come from reducing its revenue distributions to the 32 Division I conferences over the next 10 years. The NCAA is utilizing a formula based on revenue distribution presented to each league over a nine-year period starting in 2016, which leans heavily on basketball units tied to NCAA Tournament participation per Yahoo Sports.

The Power 5 conferences will pay 24% of the overall damages, the Group of 5 will pay 10%, the FCS will pay 14%, and non-football conferences in Division I will pay 12%.

As significant as the back-pay part of the equation is, what it means going forward is arguably more significant.

The NCAA and its conferences are now preparing to create new revenue-sharing and governance models for the future. Per CBSSports' Brandon Marcello, athletic departments must now prepare for new line items that could balloon up to $30 million annually as the richest schools prepare to share upwards of $22 million in revenue with players while expanding roster sizes with unlimited scholarships. There is a growing belief that there will be roster limits implemented for football but also more scholarships for sports like baseball, which has been afforded just 11.7 scholarships to share over a full roster.

The college athletics model as we know it is about to change dramatically, and there are a number of questions that need to be answered by schools across the country. Will we see de facto salary caps come into place? Is a walk-on a thing of the past? Are collectives going to still play a role in today's NIL landscape? These are just a few of the immediate questions that Sankey, athletic directors, and coaches alike will be facing.

"I suspect this topic [House v. NCAA] will dominate the meetings," UGA president Jere Morehead said on Friday.

College athletics is changing on the whole, but the SEC is gearing up for two big additions later this summer.

Coaches and administrators from Texas and Oklahoma will be on hand this week as the two schools prepare to officially join the SEC on July 1. This won't be the first SEC spring meetings for the likes of Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte and Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione, who attended last year's meetings but did not partake in any votes.

The arrival of the Longhorns and the Sooners will likely be a part of the discussion as the SEC looks to the future as a 16-team conference. While the shock value of their moves have worn off a bit, this week will provide an opportunity for a lot of SEC media to hear directly from Steve Sarkisian and Brent Venables for the first time.

The talk this week will be dominated by the House vs. NCAA settlement, but another lawsuit will likely come up as well.

Georgia quarterback Jaden Rashada is suing Florida head coach Billy Napier as well as top Gators booster Hugh Hatchco*ck and former football staffer Marcus Castro-Walker over a failed NIL deal that would've paid Rashada $13.85 million. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court on May 21, alleges that Napier, Hathco*ck, and others fraudulently induced Rashada to attend Florida with no intention of following through on their financial promises.

Specifically, the lawsuit claims fraudulent misrepresentation and inducement, aiding and abetting fraud, civil conspiracy to commit fraud, negligent misrepresentation, tortious interference with a business relationship or contract and aiding and abetting tortious interference.

247Sports' John Talty reported that Rashada informed Kirby Smart of his intention to file the lawsuit and that Smart gave his blessing.

It seems like a sure bet that Smart, Napier, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will be asked about this pending lawsuit, though any of the three saying anything of substance seems unlikely. It may also be discussed among other coaches in attendance as an example of what can go wrong when teams don't follow through on what they sell to their recruits.

The SEC unveiled its 2024 conference schedule plan during the last edition of spring meetings, which amounted to standing pat with eight games despite the conference expanding to 16. The conference announced its 2025 matchups in March, which means 2026 will become part of the conversation sooner rather than later.

The SEC has left the door open to a potential move to a nine-game conference schedule, but some of the coaches in the league have sounded hesitant to push for nine games given all the changes in college football. The biggest question in terms of adding another conference game is the impact it would have on SEC teams making the 12-team playoff, a format which seems to open the door for the conference to consistently have multiple teams in the field.

Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks did not sound convinced that an answer on 2026 will come out of this year's meetings.

"I don't know how much time we'll have," Brooks said on Friday. "That will be interesting to see if we do."

In recent years, coaches have not hesitated to point out that something needed to change with the recruiting calendar. There's been some proposals this offseason that would deliver those changes, though who supports what remains to be seen.

Per Football Scoop, there is momentum toward college football adopting a June signing period, turning the entire month of July into a dead period, and moving the December signing period up two weeks to the first Wednesday of the month. These proposed changes would, in theory, allow high school prospects to secure spots ahead of the transfer portal opening and would also make sure the December signing period is in the books well before the start of the College Football Playoff.

Smart spoke specifically about the proposed June signing period back in early March.

"There's positives and negatives to everything so we could sit here and debate it," Smart said. "Y'all guys put it all over the internet. A lot of high school coaches think, 'Well, at least I'll get my kids signed,' because a lot of high school coaches see players losing opportunities ad nauseum by signing in December and schools not having spaces because of the portal. There's high school coaches that say, 'They won't want to play their senior year.'"

Smart hinted that those players might not check the box for what he is looking for at Georgia.

"Well, if a kid doesn't play his senior year because he signed, I don't really want him on my team. If he's going to opt out for his senior year, will he do the same to me? I don't really know if that's a viable option. I don't like the idea of someone signing before their senior year because I think the senior year matters.

As wild as some of the recent changes in college athletics have been, I imagine there will be a few coaches who get asked about the potential changes and what it will mean for college football.

There will be some new faces among the football and basketball coaches who will be down in Destin and one notable absence for the first time in 2006.

The SEC has three first-year head football coaches going into 2024, a group that consists of Alabama's Kalen DeBoer, Mississippi State's Jeff Lebby, and Texas A&M's Mike Elko. DeBoer's arrival from Washington occurred after the retirement of Nick Saban, who caught folks off guard when he called it quits on Jan. 10.

Men's basketball had some high-profile changes as well.

Eric Musselman's move from Arkansas to USC opened the door for John Calipari, who bid Kentucky adieu in order to take over the Razorbacks' program. Kentucky countered by bringing in an alum in former BYU head coach Mark Pope. The only other head coaching change in the SEC occurred at Vanderbilt, where the Commodores fired Jerry Stackhouse and hired James Madison's Mark Byington.

You can bet that the new coaches will be studied closely this week, specifically DeBoer given he is replacing a legend. This will effectively be these coaches' introduction to SEC media, which should make for an entertaining few days down in Destin.

There have been other potential rule changes this offseason that have nothing to do with the House v. NCAA settlement. One of the more intriguing ones is a proposal to do away with on-field staff limitations.

The NCAA Oversight Committee has advanced a proposal to abolish the limit of football coaching staff sizes. The proposal, which has been championed by the AFCA, would allow college football programs to have more than 11 coaches on the on-field staff and would allow analysts to have more of a hands-on role.

The proposal has reached the socialization stage with the oversight committee. Whether or not the proposal will pass remains to be seen.

Given the gigantic shift that's coming to college football thanks to the recent settlement, this issue may not be discussed much this week. That said, it would be a significant change for programs like Georgia which have a number of analysts working behind the scenes.

The actual on-field product for college football is set to be fairly different in 2024. Teams will be able to use tablets on the sideline and at halftime, there will be a two-minute warning for each half, and helmet communication has now been allowed in FBS matchups.

The rule about helmet communication is that one player on the field will be allowed to have access to it and that the communication will shut off with 15 seconds left on the play clock or at the snap of the ball, whichever comes first. Smart spoke briefly about helmet communications in the spring, explaining that Georgia got three helmet devices to use during spring practice.

"We're going to find ways to simulate it and get the players accustomed to it," Smart said on March 12. "We're going to talk to some NFL teams about how they use it and what all information they try to get to the player. You don't want to overload them with information."

Smart downplayed the new technology back in March and explained that using communication like the in-helmet devices wasn't a drastic change because of what teams used in walk-thrus in the past. It feels like there will be bigger topics to discuss during spring meetings, but it could very well still come up.

Despite the drastic changes coming to college athletics, the SEC is still in great shape. The same cannot be said of some of the other conferences, which will likely be brought up this week.

The Pac-12 has essentially ceased to exist following the departures of 10 teams, and multiple ACC teams are suing the conference in regards to their current media rights deal. There are plenty of questions about the future of the traditional Group of 5 conferences following the House v. NCAA settlement, and there's even been some talk of those teams starting their own playoff.

Sankey will likely trumpet the SEC's success and the fact it stands alongside the Big Ten as the two most-stable conferences in college athletics. Having said that, there are problems that the other conferences look set to face in the very-near future, and those likely won't be ignored as big-picture talks occur this week.