This is an opinion column.

The moment was brief while perfectly illustrating this moment in the SEC scrapbook.

It was just after 10 a.m., Tuesday in the beachside resort hosting the league’s annual spring meetings. The lobby was starting to fill with VIPs when the Alabama football coach entered the space. Looking in a few directions, he stopped to ask an employee where he was headed.

Kalen DeBoer, at that moment, represented all that was new and uncertain about this blip on the timeline.

Where Nick Saban once figuratively presided over this event in the years leading up to this moment that’s more than settling minor conference issues.

No, a year after wrestling over the difference between playing eight or nine conference football games, this year’s Sandestin Summit will explore much heavier issues surrounding the very nature of collegiate sports’ existence.

From landmark legal settlements that’ll redefine the nature of amateurism to the ongoing struggle to police anything once considered foundational to the collegiate model, these are times drenched in big-picture uncertainty not unlike the new guy lost in the lobby.

Now, the SEC stands in a better position than its counterparts in the Big 12 and ACC. But real-world issues are coming to a head even for the SEC and Big Ten bullies on the block.

Just listen to the swaggering SEC commissioner Greg Sankey when addressing reporters Monday night before officially opening the meetings.

“We’ll see,” was the chorus in response to a litany of questions on everything from NIL, collective bargaining, private equity/capital, congressional elections … all of it.

Revenue sharing with athletes is a major component in recalibrating budgets less than a week after power conferences agreed to a settlement in the House vs. NCAA legal matter. Sankey has said carving out that money for athletes will lead to “hard decisions” for athletics departments. Sankey was asked what some of those decisions might be.

“Oh, we’ll see,” Sankey said. “I just said hard decisions. When you have a shift in revenue, 22%, things won’t remain the same. So that predicts people will have to make decisions. That may be any wide range of issues that I haven’t even begun to consider, some of which I can imagine, some of which I’m certain I will learn about this week and the weeks to follow.”

That’s a lot of words that add up to a shoulder shrug.

But, if we’re being honest, “hard decisions” is code for the prospect of cutting sports to take the budget hit that comes with spending up to 22% of annual revenue on payments to athletes.

To that point, new Texas A&M athletics director Trev Albert delivered one of the more definitive answers to reporters.

“We’ve just always had enough increasing revenue to overcome dumb expenses,” Alberts said to a group of writers. “I’ve said it 100 times, and I’ll say it again: We don’t have a revenue problem in college athletics, we have an expense problem.”

Interesting point.

And logical.

So what does all of this mean for NIL? Do collectives still have a place?

“We’ll see,” Sankey said. “I don’t know if my opinion on that matters right now. We’ll go through this settlement process to its conclusion. Again, there will be a set of decisions made. So we’ll see.”

There are trickle-down issues like the one that occupies more headspace for football coaches than anything. Among them is the potential to cap rosters at the 85 maximum scholarship athletes and eliminate the concept of walk-ons.

Coaches sounded uniformly opposed to such moves, none more so than Texas A&M’s Mike Elko. Another newcomer to this annual ritual on the panhandle, the new head Aggie is part of a program that made walk-ons part of its identity through the 12th Man.

His answer was as definitive as it came on a day of general indecision.

“Yeah, I’m strongly against the cap,” he said. “I think it’s absolutely against what college football stands for and what it’s about.”

But if the last few weeks taught us anything, that definition is a moving target.

Those changes are picking up speed as the legal system tightens its grip on the direction of collegiate sports — even for the powerful in the SEC.

What does it all mean?

How does this impact the fans who’ve been there from Day 1?

Like Alabama’s new football coach in an unfamiliar lobby, the SEC isn’t immune to the big changes on the horizon.

What comes next?

We’ll see.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.