Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Greg Sankey’s 2023 SEC Media Days press conference

3. National NIL standard a goal

While the way Greg Sankey remains committed to expanding the College Football Playoff helps Tennessee football, his name image and likeness focus hurts the Vols. The state of Tennessee is one of the friendlier states to NIL opportunities, and UT got out in front of this. That gives the Vols a huge advantage, and it’s already working on the recruiting trail.

Sankey knows there’s no way to curtail the benefits NIL can provide to recruiting, even if it’s not supposed to. As a result, he mentioned the goal of a national NIL standard and one that doesn’t allow things to change based on the different state laws across the country. Part of that was actually discussing the matter with Congress. Here is what he said.

"“We’ve had conversations with leaders from both sides of the aisles, and we’ll continue to do so because regardless of what’s happened recently or what happens with the election, we need a bipartisan solution for this national concept to move forward. If we don’t, then we’re going to be left not simply creating conference rules, we’re going to have to deal with state laws that vary in our region. That was actually part of our conversation in Destin as well. But the focus will remain on a national solution, and Congress is the venue for that option.”"

This is clearly going to be a focus of Sankey’s going forward, and while it makes sense, it’s not something Vol fans will be happy about. The NIL landscape has shifted the balance of power back to the Vols in certain ways, just as money on facilities did for them in the 1990s.

Is it a good thing overall what Sankey is trying to do? That’s probably the case, but there is a legitimate gripe that maybe he’s focused on this because schools like the Alabama Crimson Tide, Georgia Bulldogs and LSU Tigers, all of which rely on location rather than NIL money to win and which won the last three national titles, lose an edge here.