The original intent of the rule was that when you sign a pro contract and are paid, you become a professional athlete, being paid for your services. Now that everyone in college football is being paid to play and to transfer back and forth between schools every year, for whomever offers them the most money, it’s pretty much a moot point and ridiculously hypocritical. The whole pro versus non-pro argument no longer holds any water at all. A large number of college athletes are now actually being paid 1-10x more than they would make playing under NFL rookie contracts. When the money started openly changing hands in college football, college football players became professional/paid athletes. It’s all one and the same.
Sankey, the NCAA, and the SEC are all splitting hairs. The NCAA has no rule prohibiting it which is why they are keeping their mouths shut. It’s an old SEC rule. If the SEC honestly feels this way, then they need to immediately institute a new rule, banning NIL money, payment to athletes with annything of monetary value, and a complete ban of the use of the transfer portal. Sankey and every other school whining about it are nothing more than a hypocrites. Sankey and these schools would never do any of that, because the SEC wouldn’t be able to compete and the multi-billion dollar machine the SEC has built, would stop printing money, which is the only thing that actually matters.
The SEC should’ve been fighting against all this stuff years ago when NIL and the portal were first being discussed. At the time, the SEC was riding high and dominating college football. They were egotistical enough to believe both things would only help them extend their dominance. It was a bad miscalculation and that genie is never going back into the bottle. Let OSU, Oregon, Michigan, FSU, Miami, Clemson or Indiana start using ex-pro players to whip SEC azz every weekend and you’ll see an immediate change of heart from Sankey.
