Conference room doors are tightly closed at the SEC spring meetings in Miramar Beach, Florida, but Tennessee athletics director Danny White revealed one detail to reporters waiting outside.
“I’ve used the three letters C-B-A in every meeting I’ve been in over the last three years,” White said on May 26.
CBA stands for collective bargaining agreement, a potential solution to unbalanced NIL spending and constant free agency of the transfer portal. White has been selling the approach to his fellow athletics directors for a few years.
However, it hasn’t gained enough traction to be a serious agenda item at conference meetings like this one. And it’s remained in the background of hotter topics like playoff expansion.
The SEC and Big Ten are sparring over College Football Playoff formats. The SEC leadership wants to go from 12 teams to 16 teams. The Big Ten wants a 24-team bracket.
But On3.com reported that half the SEC athletics directors want a 24-team playoff, including White.
However, he’s more passionate about college football players and perhaps basketball players adopting a collective bargaining agreement to standardize student-athlete pay and limit player movement.
“(CBA) is way more important to me than the playoff or really anything in college sports,” White said. “I worry about the health of our industry. I worry about Olympic sports. I worry about the student-athlete experience right now with the frequency of transferring. It doesn’t feel like we’re in a very healthy spot.
“I’ve thought for a few years that a CBA is a really good option, and it seems to be working pretty well for every professional league in our country.”
The “professional” part of that conversation is what scares away many college sports power brokers.
Yes, a CBA would clearly define player pay, multi-year contracts and a hard salary cap. And as a legally binding agreement, it would end the lawsuits complicating college sports.
But a CBA also could require that student-athletes become employees as part of a players union. And that could have far-reaching consequences, not to mention the end of amateurism, even if that status exists in name only in this era.
Why Danny White wants BCS formula in CFP selection
White is a numbers guy. He likes data points, line graphs and standardized formulas to measure success.
It’s no wonder that Tennessee has enjoyed enormous growth under White, including record revenues of $304 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year.
But the current structure of college sports is much messier, which has frustrated White. There are countless loopholes in player pay. NIL contracts and salary caps aren’t enforceable. And free agency seems never-ending.
A preference for hard numbers also informs White’s preference of a 24-team playoff.
College Football Playoff participants are chosen by a 13-member committee of athletic directors, former coaches, former players and journalists. White believes potential human errors in choosing those teams could be tested on the field with an expanded playoff.
After all, less than 10% of college football teams make the 12-team playoff. Almost 20% of Division I basketball and baseball teams make their respective NCAA tournaments.
White believes all these problems are related. He wants more objective data, more standardization and more access to the postseason.
“Do we need a CBA? Do we need multi-year contracts? I think it’s all a little bit related,” White said. “… (Judging playoff participants) is harder because of the (lack of) data points. I kind of like the (formulaic approach of the Bowl Championship Series) era where there was something to understand.
“I think a hybrid of a human element with some data – where it’s clear to everyone what the inputs are – could inspire how we build our schedules. Having a little bit more of a data approach could be helpful. But I think a bigger field could be helpful too.”
Notably, White does not want the SEC or any conference to break away with its own CBA or postseason structure. He simply wants to solve the problems across the board with a new approach.
“We have such a strong product,” White said. “We just need to clean up our structure in relation to our athletes and get the postseason right.”
Adam Sparks is the Tennessee football beat reporter. Email adam.sparks@knoxnews.com. X, formerly known as Twitter@AdamSparks. Support strong local journalism by subscribing atknoxnews.com/subscribe.
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee AD Danny White calls for CBA, 24-team playoff at SEC spring meetings