The SEC (the Sports One) Is Acting Like It's Invincible

Plus: Sports teams are writing it off, motorsports documentaries, and the NBA and Stanley Cup finals.

Good morning and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Maybe think twice before jumping for joy today (especially because the A's still lost).

Plenty to talk about today, with college football in turmoil again (I could copy and paste that every week), plus an interesting sports-related tax issue to discuss, along with two new racing documentaries and the NBA and NHL reaching the final stages of their playoffs. Let's get to it.

Locker Room Links

• Bad take! "NBA officiating needs more bias." Surely there are better ways to make the regular season matter more.
• Oklahoma's softball dynasty is over—they lost to Texas Tech in the semifinals Monday night in a walk-off play at the plate.
• "Illinois passed a new sports betting tax in the middle of the night."
• Russian teams are still banned from the Winter Olympics in 2026 (although some individual athletes will be allowed to participate).
• The FBI is probing a company partially owned by the NFL and MLB players unions.
• A transgender athlete won first place in high jump and triple jump at California's state high school track and field championship meet. The state allowed an extra athlete to compete and medal in events the trans athlete was competing in.
• Two leaked medical tests say Algerian boxer and Olympic gold medal winner Imane Khelif has male chromosomes.
• RIP John Brenkus, creator and founder of Sport Science.
• Elsewhere in Reason: "J.D. Vance Wants a Free Market for Crypto. What About Everything Else?"
• The only thing crappier than Manchester United's season (15th place!) is its stadium food:
  

  Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium has been given a two-star food hygiene rating after mouse droppings were found in multiple hospitality areas.

  The inspection report from the Trafford Council, which was completed on April 16, gave recognition that "significant work has… pic.twitter.com/UPSWLNVXVB

  — The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) May 27, 2025

S-E-C Guarantee?

The SEC seems to think it's invincible. If it gets its way, it just might be.

We've only had one 12-team College Football Playoff and even though the format is already changing for this season, the college football world can't stop talking about expanding the playoff (again) and changing the format (again).

The all-powerful SEC and Big Ten don't want to take any chances. They think they can design the best system: four automatic qualifiers for each of them, plus two each from the ACC and Big 12, one team from the midmajor Group of 6 conferences, and three at-large spots.

Based on tradition and hubris, they think they're the best conferences, they've always been the best conferences, and they always will be the best conferences, so they deserve multiple automatic qualifiers even if their top teams have a relatively bad year.

Multiple automatic qualifiers would be unprecedented in American sports. The other college sports, to my knowledge, don't give out more than one automatic qualifier per conference. The NFL doesn't guarantee the NFC East two playoff spots just because the division has some of the league's most powerful and historic teams. The only parallel I can think of is European soccer, where the international club competitions dish out a given number of qualification spots to the top teams in each country (though the number of spots per country is based on a coefficient formula calculated by team performance in the last five years of the competitions—sounds a bit like the old BCS, doesn't it?).

It's not, however, all that unprecedented in American business. Startups rise to the top of their new fields, and once they become powerful enough to crush their competition, they call for rules and regulations that will hold back any new upstarts with funny ideas or better business practices. But no matter how dominant they get, a new competitor eventually comes along to knock them off their pedestal.

The SEC is following this playbook, the sports version of crony capitalism. It has long been the best conference in college football, but its grip might be slipping—they haven't sent a team to the national championship in two years. The system is changing (expanded playoff; name, image, and likeness payments; direct "revenue-sharing" payments to players) and different teams in other conferences might find different ways to succeed amid the chaos. But if the SEC can guarantee that a quarter of its conference gets into the College Football Playoff, that's going to be an advantage in recruiting players and coaches.

Of course, if the SEC and Big Ten each have four of the best 16 teams in the country, they don't need to worry about automatic qualification. So why not just stick to proving it on the field? We'll see if they decide to take their ball and go home.

They're the Ones Writing It Off

Did you know the Los Angeles Dodgers can write off Shohei Ohtani's contract for tax purposes?

Not just Ohtani's contract—Mookie Betts', Freddie Freeman's, Yoshinobu Yamamoto's, and everyone else on the team too. For tax purposes, these contracts are "intangible assets" that can be written off over 15 years.

It's a good deal if you can get it, but the gravy train may soon slow down (but it's not getting scrapped).

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the House of Representatives, only half the value of those contracts could be written off instead of the full value, the New York Times reports. But that change will only affect future owners.

One NFL owner told the Times the provision "felt punitive" and speculated that Trump is using the possible change to get leverage over sports owners. (Leverage for what isn't exactly clear, but who knows when Trump will want leverage for some kind of deal.) A White House spokesperson suggested to the Times that the change had more to do with ticket prices to sporting events: "The president is committed to ensuring that sports teams overcharging ticketholders do not receive favorable tax treatment. His focus is on fairness for fans, not team ownership." (This feels like grabbing a screwdriver to try to put out a grill fire—they don't seem especially related.)

One team to watch in this space is the Atlanta Braves. The team is owned by a publicly traded company. Under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, publicly traded companies will have limitations (starting in 2027) on how much of a write-off they can take from their highest-paid salaries. It could mean a $19 million tax hike for the Braves—though not if their new lobbyists have something to say about it.

Green Flag

Let's go racing. Two new documentaries dropped last week that will be of interest to motorsports fans.

There are a ton of new sports documentaries these days, but Earnhardt (four episodes, one hour each, on Amazon Prime Video) shows them all how it's done. Too often we get documentaries that are too one-sided—usually too deferential to the star power of the main character. Earnhardt could have been like that, and if anything, the racing aspects could have used a little more of a "Raise Hell, praise Dale" vibe. But with the late Dale Earnhardt only able to speak for himself through archival footage, the documentary gets three of Earnhardt's four children to open up about their family life—the positives and the negatives (with a lot of the latter). Sports documentaries should give viewers a fuller picture of their subjects, and Earnhardt absolutely succeeds.

On a completely different note, Netflix gave the Drive to Survive treatment to the 2024 season of the all-female F1 Academy racing series in the super creatively titled docuseries F1: The Academy (seven episodes, 30–40 minutes each). Whether you saw all the racing action last year or skipped it but had your interest piqued, it's worth a watch (as long as you can put up with a bunch of "girl boss" pop music in the soundtrack). The stakes and racing action are compelling enough on their own, and they're coupled with the interesting backgrounds of girls who dream of making it to Formula One someday. Plus, Americans Lia Block and Chloe Chambers get a solid amount of airtime. It's unlikely anyone from this crop will eventually make it to Formula 1, but it's fun nonetheless to learn their stories and watch them compete.

The Finals

Who you got? We're doing another Free Agent reader survey, and I want to know who you're rooting for in the NBA and Stanley Cup finals.

Personally, I'm pulling for the Indiana Pacers. I don't have much against the Thunder (other than their crazy stadium deal—$1,200 in tax dollars per resident!). But I have forgiven the Pacers (franchise, not the players of the time) for the Malice at the Palace and I think some Midwestern solidarity has them pulling at my heartstrings. Also, apparently they're weird.

On the ice, I'm hoping for a Florida Panthers repeat. I'm not super happy about rooting for a repeat, but I'd rather see that than see Canada finally break their three-decade Stanley Cup drought. Canada already got to win the 4 Nations Face-Off this year, they can't get the Stanley Cup too. (Although los petroleros are one of my preferred Canadian teams.)

Take a minute to fill out the survey here and let me know what you're thinking.

Replay of the Week

I knew this was legal in pickleball. I had no idea it was legal in tennis.

HOW DID RUNE DO THAT?!

THIS Holger's around the net post is the shot of the day ???? #RolandGarros pic.twitter.com/HWHDT6HbdI

— Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) May 30, 2025

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, the Kalamazoo Growlers against the Battle Creek Battle Jacks.