SEC’s Greg Sankey pushes back on legislation, while billionaire booster fires back

The SEC spring meetings concluded this week, but not without some late-stage fireworks between Commissioner Greg Sankey and Texas Tech billionaire booster Cody Campbell regarding proposed federal legislation.

Sankey Questions Federal Oversight

Speaking to the media on the final day of the spring meetings, Commissioner Sankey expressed skepticism regarding a bipartisan Senate bill introduced earlier this week. Specifically, Sankey took issue with the suggestion that conferences should pool their media rights.

"Nobody’s ever had that conversation with me," Sankey said, per On3. "So, I saw the bill was introduced yesterday, and as I’ve said a couple of times, 111 pages, I haven’t consumed. They have looked at that SBA piece, so always offered that those who advocate have represented things to me about how revenue would be distributed generally. I think they have no idea how hard those conversations would be, no idea."

Booster Fires Back

Cody Campbell, the Texas Tech booster who assisted senators with the drafting of the legislation, quickly took to social media to contest Sankey’s stance. In a post on X, Campbell pushed back against the Commissioner's characterization of the complexities surrounding media rights pooling.

"If pooling is just too hard for even a luminary such as Greg Sankey to fathom, and since he apparently thinks that the rest of the sports and commercial world is too ignorant and stupid to find a solution, there is nothing in the Cantwell/Cruz bill that forces him (or anybody else) to participate in the conversation," Campbell wrote.

As the debate continues, the SEC presidents and chancellors have also weighed in, issuing a collective statement on X regarding the situation.