So now the fan, I mean the judge, in the Trinidad Chambliss eligibility case wants the NCAA to explain why it walked out of his courtroom before he wept while reading his soliloquy of the poor, mistreated college football player.
This is bad news for all involved.
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Not just the judge and his wildly provincial antics, but the precedent it set. And the dire straits of the NCAA.
It’s last rights stuff, everyone. The NCAA is just about out of time.
Take a stand here and get serious about legally fighting an eligibility clock all members agreed to, or wither away on the vine with barely a sound. You want to end this nonsense of six and seven and eight years to play four or five or six?
Put everything you’ve legally got into the one critical appeal case that can send shockwaves through amateur sports. Or at least what’s left of it.
But here’s the problem: even If the NCAA can somehow win on appeal in the Chambliss case and prevent the star quarterback from returning to Ole Miss to play a fifth season — one would think an appeals court in Mississippi may not have a flag-waving, card-carrying member of Hotty Toddy on the bench — it may be staring at a much bigger problem.
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A mutiny among member institutions.
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What would prevent Ole Miss, after a lost appeal in the Chambliss case, to simply say we don’t care what the court said. We don’t care about an eligibility clock we agreed to (which it’s currently doing, anyway).
We’re going to play Chambliss. What are you going to do about it?
As absurd as that sounds, none of us thought we’d be talking about paying a quarterback $6 million for one season — after paying millions to get him out of his previous deal. But here we are in the ever-devolving spin cycle of let’s see what we can break next.
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One would think, in that specific scenario, the SEC presidents would step in and say Chambliss is ineligible and any game he plays is forfeited by Ole Miss. But there’s a teeny-weeny problem with that.
The remaining 15 members of the SEC, or even a majority, may actually support Ole Miss and its fight against the NCAA. They may take a stand, too, because they want the ultimate payoff: a league of their own.
No more bickering with the Big Ten about some dopey 24-team playoff, no more adhering to make it up as you go along enforcement from the NCAA. Just the SEC, its own rulebook and television partner (ESPN) ― and a fat revenue-generating playoff of its own.
My god, a six-team SEC playoff with two first-round byes, and every game but the championship game played on campus. The final round played in Atlanta, the Mecca of bubba.
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It’s not that difficult to envision, or pull off. It doesn’t take anything but will and desire.
A 12-game, SEC-only schedule feeding into an SEC-only postseason. Go back to divisions, play the seven teams in your division, and rotate five teams from the opposite division.
You want annual crossover rivals like the OG SEC? Serve it up, baby.
Imagine the money ESPN will pay annually for eight SEC vs SEC games a week — or 97 SEC games over a season, including the six-team, five-game playoff.
Now that’s something to weep about, judge.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NCAA death and new SEC birth in college sports closer than you think
