This is an opinion column.

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SEC spring meetings take place in Sandestin at an expansive resort on the beach.

It’s a beautiful little work junket for the league.

Coaches bring their families. Administrators do, too. There’s a big party with an open bar. There’s free golf. Television executives fly in to keep the wheels of big business well greased. Reporters tag along to cover the shindig, soak it all in and enjoy the scenery.

Everyone acts like important meetings are taking place, but these guys couldn’t even bother to vote for playing nine conference football games last year.

What I’m saying is this: SEC spring meetings are just a big excuse to spend a whole lot of money on nothing.

Because the SEC has tons of money, and the SEC needs to spend all that money on something. After all, it’s a nonprofit organization. Its official mission is to help member institutions organize championship events.

The real mission of the SEC, though, is to generate as much money as possible for everyone except the athletes playing the games.

But that’s about to change.

I wonder how many athletes are at SEC spring meetings representing the interests of athletes? Something tells me not enough, if any at all.

Instead, we have guys like SEC commissioner Greg Sankey saying vague things like “hard decisions” will need to be made when the athletes start getting paid. Instead, we have Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne uttering banal words about deferred maintenance for stadiums.

The implication, of course, is that non-venue sports might need to be cut to pay athletes.

“There may have to be hard decisions,” Sankey said. “Some I can’t even begin to imagine.”

Said Byrne: “Last year, we spent $20 million in deferred maintenance. That’s to make sure steel is reinforced. Concrete is reinforced … deferred maintenance isn’t real sexy but you have to do it.”

Let me just make this emphatically clear. If teams in the SEC begin cutting sports before Sankey and Byrne begin cutting their salaries, then they both need to be fired.

The bald-faced audacity of Sankey threatening “hard decisions” while organizing an opulent all-expenses paid summer vacation for coaches and administrators of his league is so comically ridiculous that it sounds like the idea of a very bad skit on “Saturday Night Live.”

If Sankey wants to keep earning his paycheck, then Sankey needs to figure out how football can make the most money possible. Is it by further ruining college football, or is it by making college football the best version of what it can be?

Maybe start with 10 conference games every year and go from there. Suddenly, these are not hard decisions after all.

It doesn’t take a genius to do simple math.

If Byrne can’t keep the books balanced when it comes time to pay players, then he’s going to need to cut the bloated salaries of coaches, administrators and support personnel. Maybe football teams don’t need so many employees for recruiting and breaking down film after all.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart is set to make $13 million per year. How is Georgia going to pay players? Maybe start by slashing Smart’s preposterous salary down to a measly $2 million a year and go from there.

Sankey makes $3.6 million a year. Byrne makes $2.625 million per year. They should be making no more than university presidents and college deans.

Here’s the truth about college sports. They have to spend what they make. These are non-profits, after all.

No, these were scams. College athletics are big business. It’s just fraudulent business built on a framework that has been deemed to break antitrust laws. For a long time, all the money was given to coaches, athletic directors, construction companies, third-party contractors, etc., etc. The list goes on and on.

Now some of it needs to be given to players.

Major college athletics are ways for executives and coaches to bilk the system for millions of dollars because they didn’t have to pay the employees. Welp, not anymore.

The Olympic sports aren’t going anywhere. It’s the runaway salaries of guys like Sankey and Byrne that need to be wiped from the books. These are just college sports, after all. That’s what everyone with a microphone keeps saying. College sports are different. College sports aren’t pro sports.

Exactly right. Then why do administrators need to make multi-million dollar salaries when the athletes get nothing?

It was illegal all along and no one is letting them off the hook if they continue stealing money by cutting college sports.

SOUND OFF

Got a question for Joe? Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe an email about what’s on your mind for the mailbag. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the most controversial sports book ever written, “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”