SEC-Big Ten war is real, and Kentucky's new AD may just shift the power

Walk with me as we cross the line of could-be, and leap directly into the theater of the absurd. J Batt is your new athletic director at Kentucky. A rising star in the business of administration, and one of the top fundraisers in all of college sports.

There’s a reason Hall of Fame Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo sounded despondent when speaking of the university losing both its president and athletic director in the same summer. Or as new Michigan State football coach Pat Fitzgerald told me in March: “J Batt is the real deal. A game-changer.”

And this is where we jump into the deep end of the absurd, because frankly, we’ve been there in college sports for the past five years, anyway. Transformative moves: NFL sees NIL chaos — and smells a threat to its empire | OpinionDeep wounds: Brendan Sorsby drama ends, but not before tearing college football apartWhat if Batt, 44, who is close friends with legendary Alabama coach Nick Saban and was deputy athletic director in Tuscaloosa from 2017-22, could take the SEC deep inside the thinking of the Big Ten and its pursuit of becoming the biggest, baddest conference in all of college sports. You know, the title currently held — tenuously, at best — by the SEC.

What do Big Ten presidents truly want with a proposed 24-team College Football Playoff, and where are the weak links or stress points in the pursuit? Is there a possibility for the SEC to work with the Big Ten — and not just on pushing back against federal intervention in college sports? Batt spent barely 12 months in East Lansing before returning to the SEC, and if you listen to Izzo, it’s clearly because of lasting and lingering dysfunction within the university that also led president Kevin Guskiewicz to leave for Clemson — while taking an $800,000 annual pay cut.

Guskiewicz hired Batt away from Georgia Tech, in what was considered a coup for Michigan State. In one short year, Batt fired Jonathan Smith after two seasons as football coach, and hired Fitzgerald.