Missouri Tiger Athletic Director Laird Veatch met with the media on Thursday to discuss the Tigers’ plans going forward after the passing of the House settlement.
Here’s a few of the quotes I found most telling and what I think went unsaid in them.
If you want to look back at Part 1, you can find that here.
And you can find Part 2 here.
When asked about transparency with player contracts
What Veatch said: "I think we are tracking more and more toward that atmosphere where we have those types of, that type of transparency. But I don’t think we’re there yet and in large part because we are still dealing with student-athletes and they are young people with protections, legal protections. And some of those areas that have to be worked through and we have to get advice on before we can provide those kind of specifics. So I could see that happening down the road and it may be, that may be in our future, but I think that’s one of the many, many questions that has to be answered on the legal front.”
What went unsaid: I’m of two minds here.
First, yes these are still students and there are legal protections around what info schools are able to give out to the public about them. You can find out some info about students, but even stuff like which classes they are enrolled in is protected information. So it makes sense to me that those protections would extend to contract information.
But also, if they are gedtting paid by a public university, then that should reasonably fall under information that can be found through a Freedom Of Information Act request the same way coach contracts are. It might be a little different because its specifically paid out of athletic revenue, which is a different overall pot than the university's costs/revenues but it’s still money being spent by a public institution, which should mean that it’s findable.
I’m interested to see how that one plays out over the next couple of years.
When asked about the Big 10 and SEC pairing off and pulling away
What Veatch said: “I think that there’s always going to be talk and speculation in our world about conferences and how they compete together and restructuring and all those things. So that is a common media topic. I will tell you that, you know, in our rooms and the conversations that I have with other athletic directors, I just left Orlando where we were with all the FBS ADs and there’s, there’s a real commitment to seeing this, seeing this through for the betterment of college athletics as a whole. We all are competitive and we all need to keep pushing for our opportunities to be successful in that environment. But beyond that, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t speculate any further on those topics.”
What went unsaid: The competitive aspect and the “betterment of college athletics as a whole” is all well and good. But we know the real factor that’s going to make these decisions is money, especially now that there’s a new major expense that every college has to find the money for every year.
If it makes financial sense for the Big 10 and SEC to do their own thing, they’re going to do it whether it’s better for college athletics or not.
When asked if schools following the new rules is a reasonable expectation
What Veatch said: “Well I think we all have to make a commitment, particularly as leaders and as athletic directors, presidents, and I think that’s what you’re seeing and we’ll continue to see and even when you talk to coaches, you know, particularly behind the scenes, they’re tried of operating in the environment that we have been, right? They want to know what the rules of the game are and they’re going to continue to push and try to get a competitive advantage, but we have to get to a point where we are, we’re at least, you know, operating from the same set of rules and I believe we’re all embracing that piece of it. We’re all going to continue to push, we’re all going to be aggressive, and Mizzou will be, too, right? We’re not, we’re going to do what it takes to continue to win and be aggressive, but we also have to be committed to being a part of a larger whole.”
What went unsaid: That’s a very diplomatic way to say, “No.”
We’ve had teams work under the same set of rules before. Teams broke them.
Teams are going to continue to break the new rules. The issue isn’t whether we should expect teams to faithfully abide by the rules, but making sure that enforcement for those who do break them makes sense and is doable.
Because if there’s no effective enforcement arm, nobody is going to follow these rules even though we all know what the rules are now.
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