Following last week’s discussion among B1G leaders, a possibility of self-governance was whispered in the SEC meeting this week. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was quite vocal about it, saying he isn’t “afraid to break away.” However, ESPN’s Paul Finebaum doesn’t think that it would happen.

“I heard an idea floating yesterday,” said Finebaum during his May 27 appearance on Get Up. “You have to go back 60 years to where the NFL and the AFL were separate, and they met in what is now called the Super Bowl. I don’t think it’s realistic right now.”

“There are so many people here unhappy with where we are, and it’s so complicated. A year ago, when we talked, everybody was talking about the house settlement. Remember that, saving college sports? I had a college president tell me yesterday, ‘We are worse off today than we were.’ So that’s why you’re hearing this type of talk right now.”

While a frustration over a lack of uniform and enforceable national rules in college sports is the reason for this SEC breakaway, Finebaum said the isolation of the SEC to play by its own separate rules isn’t the solution. The breakaway would jeopardize the SEC teams’ historic non-conference rivalries; that could affect their million-dollar production.

To explain the unrealism of this SEC proposal, Finebaum took the lessons of the AFL-NFL merger as an example. In the 1960s, the NFL and AFL operated completely independently. But in 1966, two leagues eventually merged after realizing that fragmenting pro football is bad for long-time survival. As a result of that merging, Super Bowl was created.

Therefore, if the SEC breaks away completely on its own, the sport’s viewership will divide, and the true meaning of a “National Champion” will dilute. Considering this, Smart’s proposal does not appear to be a profitable business for the SEC.

The failure of the legislative SCORE Act in Congress became the trigger point for this frustration. Without any central tracking, schools offered million-dollar NIL deals. Ballooning football rosters threatened the budget of athletic departments. Surely, the March White House Roundtable led to the signing of an executive order titled “Urgent National Action to Save College Sports.” Even the order attempted to implement some restrictions, but that did not change the situation for coaches.

Thus while the NCAA rules weakened and left college sports without a centralized authority, Power 4 conference leaders, for federal guardrails, lobbied Washington, D.C. But the failure of the Act signals that national relief is not coming soon. Yet, self-governance seems impossible.

“What you’re hearing is the expression of frustration about the lack of progress, and I’ll go back to March 6. I was in the White House, and I spoke about the need for national standards. We still believe we need national standards,” said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey.

However, Kirby Smart has several reasons to support the proposal.

Kirby Smart’s perspective on self-governance

Coaches like Kirby Smart are calling for an NFL-style model in CFB in the era of NIL. But if that’s not the scenario, establishing independent SEC rules would help stabilize athletic budgets. As a result, the massive football spending won’t wipe out non-revenue sports.

“I’ve said this for a long time to our president; I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find rules that everybody plays by, then we should play on our own,” said Smart. “I’m not afraid of that. I’m not afraid to break away and say that our conference is strong enough to go out and play.”

The SEC has immense media rights and brand power. The conference’s 10-year media rights deal with Disney pays an estimated $710 million annually.

“If we could actually function financially, it would make our programs more stable. We could support things financially. I’m talking about all the sports and do our own rules—I’d be all for that,” added Smart.