At the Ed O’Bannon trial last summer, Sankey was an NCAA witness called to defend college sports’ current model. The NCAA lost the case and is appealing the decision, which includes allowing football and men’s basketball players to be paid about $5,000 per year. Sankey reportedly became emotional on the stand while telling the judge a story about his baseball coach and a life lesson learned when Sankey was not in the lineup.

Sankey testified that paying athletes would have far-reaching ramifications and that the incentive for players to stay in school and graduate would be weakened if they’re paid. “It has great potential to take away from the academic core,” Sankey testified. “There’s no attachment to the education of the student like there is with a scholarship.”

Sankey described four other potential problems of paying players for use of their names, images and likenesses:

• Colleges could recruit players away from other schools

• Overzealous fans could disguise payments to athletes as being for use of their name, image or likeness

• Teams that don’t offer payments would be more hesitant to play teams that do

• The divide between college athletes and the general student body would continue to grow

Well, at least the SEC has plenty of money coming in to pay for the judgments.  Besides, for the presidents, this is probably Sankey’s more important job qualification:

Sankey is currently chairman of the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions. One of the biggest reasons the SEC won seven straight national titles in football was that it avoided major NCAA penalties that could have hurt championship contenders.

Hire a former NCAA compliance officer to help Sankey out and the conference ought to be set.