Georgia leadership pushes for order in tampering ‘chaos’, calendar concerns

Morehead took a strong stance when it comes to finding enforcement for tampering. He recognizes the College Sports Commission and NCAA haven’t exactly come down on schools for tampering. The most high-profile case involves Ole Miss plucking Clemson linebacker Luke Ferrelli from its roster after the Cal transfer had enrolled at Clemson.

If more of that continues, Morehead floated the idea that the SEC could come up with its own rules as a conference and enforce them, even if other leagues won’t play by those same standards.

“I think we’re getting to a point that the Southeastern Conference is going to have to create its own set of rules, enforce them against our members and hope that we can set an example that the other Power Four conferences will then follow,” Morehead said. “We desperately need rules and rules that are going to be enforced. Right now we have rules, but they’re not being enforced.”

Morehead knows not every school in the sport will play by the rules. His hope is that the SEC could be a lead when it comes to rule enforcement and creating a level playing field for the sport.

“What’s the risk? That we’re going to have a great, orderly conference where we’re all working together, and everyone else is in chaos?” Morehead said. “Does that really put us in a bad position? I don’t know. Maybe it puts us in a better position to have less chaos, because right now we have chaos, and we’re still waiting for someone to enforce the House settlement, and for someone to enforce the NCAA tampering rules.”

While Morehead spent much of time discussing tampering and rule enforcement, Brooks took his time explaining how the college football calendar could be improved.

Coaches and athletic directors across the country recognize it’s an issue. Georgia hasn’t yet formally announced whether it will have a spring game. Brooks explained that the future of spring practice is one of the many elements of the college football calendar under review.

“Everybody wants to wave a magic wand and just pretend, but there’s things, when you look at the Army-Navy game, when you look at the dates of the CFP, when you look at the dates of when semesters start on campuses,” Brooks said. “Those are beyond the committee’s purview, so we have to look within those contracts and say, ‘What can we move?’ So there’s easy ones and then the hard ones.”

Brooks seemed optimistic that schools could move up the start of the season, with more schools playing in the Week 0 slot. But next year’s national championship game, for instance, is set for Jan. 25.

Add in signing periods, the transfer portal and the hiring cycle and it’s a lot to manage. Solving one problem may just end up creating another.

“Fleshing all those out and deciding the lesser of two evils is where you wind up when you’re making tough calendar decisions,” Brooks said. “Trust me, I’ve heard from lots of ADs, heard from lots of coaches, everybody’s got a lot of great ideas, but every idea has consequences. And we’re trying to basically put all those together, present them and say, ‘What are the things we’re willing to live with?

“What are the things we want to change? What are the things we can’t change? What are the consequences we’re willing to deal with from them?’”

College football has changed significantly since Brooks and Morehead began working together in January 2021. Consider that name, image and likeness legislation had not even gone into effect at the time of Brooks’ hiring.

Brooks and Morehead are going to play a significant part in mapping out the future of the sport.

Georgia’s leadership expects to, in part because it knows it can’t expect much help from outside forces.

“I think several SEC presidents are as concerned as I am, but I’ll let them speak for themselves. But we certainly are talking about these issues,” Morehead said. “I suspect the athletic directors are talking about these issues, because we’re not in a good place right now. We’ve got to find some solutions. We had hoped Congress would take the lead and pass the SCORE Act, but so far, Congress has not taken the lead and passed anything.”