Mike Slive is preparing for his final spring meetings as the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) as it heads into a transitional phase.
Speaking with the Associated Press, Slive said satellite camps and graduate transfer rules will be two of the most discussed items at this year's meetings. SEC coaches are losing more and more local recruits to outside schools, so the conference will explore their own satellite camp rule.
"We prefer our current legislation," Slive told the AP. "It gets complex when that legislation is not national legislation, so we would like to see our rule become national legislation. The real question is: If it doesn't, what are we going to do? That'll be basically one of the primary subjects. I don't have an answer, but we hope an answer will emerge out of Destin."
Jim Harbaugh and James Franklin, head football coaches at Michigan and Penn State, respectively, made headlines this offseason for guest-coaching at football camps in the heart of SEC country. The NCAA only allows coaches to hold football camps on their own school's campus or nearby, but they are fully allowed to be "guests" at out-of-state camps.
The SEC will reportedly seek to have these satellite camps banned, the AP reported, but will likely allow their own coaches the same privileges if they are unsuccessful.
"We've tried to have a rule that we think is sane and doesn't make it more intense than it already is," Slive said. "If the rest of the country sees it differently, we're going to pay attention to that."
Long considered the most competitive conference in college football, the field is starting to level around the SEC and other Power 5 conferences are even surpassing it. Further weakening the SEC is the conference's graduate transfer rule.
While the NCAA allows college graduates with remaining athletic eligibility to transfer without penalty of sitting out a season, the SEC is not so welcoming. When Everett Golson decided to transfer from Notre Dame, he was reportedly considering going to a number of different SEC schools, but ultimately chose Florida State, an ACC school.
Due to his past academic punishment at Notre Dame, Golson would probably have had a hard time getting a waiver from the SEC to play right away.
"That doesn't make any sense," Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs told the AP. "It's a double standard. We're holding a group that has proven that they can compete academically at a high level (to a higher standard) than a group that we're not sure about.
"This is an unfair competitive advantage."
