SEC-Big Ten war is real, and Kentucky's new AD may just shift the power
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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.
What 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.
Four days later, Batt announced an historic $401 million donation from a single donor that heavily benefits Spartan athletics.
Translation: Batt isn’t just some figurehead, he’s a mover and shaker.
Which brings us all the way back to the SEC/Big Ten rivalry. If you don’t think Batt knows exactly what’s going on inside the Big Ten’s future plans, you’re not following along.
You better believe SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will spend time with Batt in the very near future, and do his best to deconstruct Batt’s Big Ten intel. No different than Big Ten presidents and commissioner Tony Petitti doing the same with Ross Bjork, who was hired as Ohio State’s athletic director in 2024 after spending the previous 12 years as athletic director at Ole Miss and Texas A&M.
Or Sankey did with Trev Alberts when Texas A&M hired him away from Nebraska in 2024.
It’s all part of the high stakes competition between the leagues. Who do you know, and what do you know?
And can it be of value when you arrive in your new destination.
“Any sort of prognostication is misguided right now,” Batt said of the future of college sports during his introductory news conference at Kentucky. “You’ve got to be strategic and smart.”
He was speaking of Kentucky’s future. He may as well have been speaking of the SEC, too.
It’s not as absurd as you’d think.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY Sports: New Kentucky AD J Batt hands SEC new leverage in Big Ten power battle
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