While Nebraska football fans would love to believe that there’s a way to keep sports and politics separate, that’s simply not the way the world works. It’s not just because athletes and coaches bring their own opinions and beliefs to their lives every day. It’s because politics serves as a pretty good model for getting things done (no, really) when it comes to achieving large-scale acceptance of a position.
Take the way the SEC is handling the Big Ten and other conferences' attempts to pressure Greg Sankey and his ilk to add a ninth conference game to football teams’ schedules. Sankey and his cohorts have managed to fight back using a political approach known as “controlling the narrative.”
The SEC just tried to hustle Nebraska and the Big Ten—and it’s working
After beginning the week complaining about how the SEC is the best conference in the country and how their schedules are always the toughest, Sankey stepped into the background and allowed a second spokesperson to float an offer to Nebraska football and the rest of the Big Ten.
“LSU coach Brian Kelly says officials this week did discuss a regular season scheduling arrangement with the Big Ten,” Ross Dellenger reported on Wednesday evening. “including adding a ninth SEC game. Would be 9 SEC games + B1G game + 2 others.”
On its face, schools like Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi State would be on the same footing as Nebraska, USC, and Ohio State until you look deeper. And until you remember, teams in the Big Ten already play 9 conference games.
In other words, the SEC is offering a “deal” to add 9 conference games to its slate as long as it also get a Big Ten team, and then 2 other non-conference games. However, the deal is pretty one-sided since the B1G would have 9 conference games, an SEC opponent and then just one other non-conference opponent.
And yet, when someone like Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule stands up and points out that pronounced flaw in the idea, Rhule will be called a coward, people will bring up NU dropping the series against Tennessee, and the SEC will control the narrative.
There’s no telling where talks about this agreement will go. But the SEC scored a big victory by having Brian Kelly roll out the idea officially, while painting it as “only being fair.”