Sankey unconcerned by division in SEC over 24-team playoffplayGreg Sankey on CFP expansion: The move to 16 is ‘the right next step’ (1:21)SEC commissioner Greg Sankey tells Rich Eisen his thoughts about expanding the College Football Playoff from 12 teams to 16. (1:21)Pete Thamel
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — At a moment of feisty rhetoric regarding the biggest issues looming over college sports, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey struck a tone of patience and pragmatism on the eve of the league’s annual meetings.
Sankey made clear he did not “anticipate any decisions on the College Football Playoff” at the meetings, noting that there’s still time ahead of the Dec. 1 deadline. The potential to expand the CFP to 24 teams was a big topic nonetheless.
Though the Big Ten’s coaches and athletic directors put up a united front in support of expanding to 24 last week at that league’s meetings in California, Sankey acknowledged that his league will not have the same unanimity, a fact that didn’t seem to concern him. He’s also not concerned that the three other power conference commissioners have come out in favor of doubling the size of the CFP.
“Doesn’t bother me,” Sankey mentioned when asked about being the last so-called holdout for expanding to 24. “People tell me that, but I don’t know if you pay attention in college sports. Positions seem to change a lot.”
Sankey’s modus operandi in big decisions has long been patience, little public revelation and consuming as much information as possible. He referenced the conversations here at meetings last year about the CFP potentially expanding to 16 — with automatic qualifiers — as instructive to how these meetings will go.
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“I’m not an opponent of 24 or 28,” Sankey mentioned. “We have to inform the decision-making. I think we did a good job informing our position last year on 16. We’ll consider other ideas, certainly, this week and moving forward.”
Sankey acknowledged that there are different factions in his league on the decision to expand to 24 teams and hinted that there could be varied opinions — different from the Big Ten’s unified front — that come out of the SEC meeting this week.
With the SEC and Big Ten essentially having creative control of the CFP, the Big Ten has made clear its preferences. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has mentioned the only options his league is considering are either staying at 12 or growing to 24.
When Sankey was asked about his league’s comfort staying at 12, he noted the potential for division. “It varies,” he mentioned. He added that there weren’t any unanimous votes the last time the CFP expanded from four to 12: “We never had a unanimous vote. I don’t think you’d have a unanimous vote right now.”
Part of the conversation about the 24-team College Football Playoff will revolve around the impact — on the field and financially — on the regular season. The SEC dominates regular-season television ratings, and one of the conversations set to emerge again this week is whether the SEC’s regular season could be devalued by a bigger playoff.
Sankey referenced the 12-team playoff and how Oklahoma’s potential for a CFP bid in 2025 helped ratchet up the meaning of its November games, including a road game at Tennessee. He mentioned excellent teams in the four-team system losing in September and having no hope at the CFP.
What concerns Sankey in expanding the CFP to more games is a decrease in value. He mentioned being a Bills fan and seeing Josh Allen sit out a late-season game against the Jets, taking one snap to preserve a starting streak.
He noted there’s a “tipping point” in balancing college football’s regular season and when it’d lose value if the postseason got too big.
“When professional sports have added to their postseason, it’s always been a small adjustment,” Sankey mentioned. “Four to 12 [in college] was monumental, but I think it was justifiable. You want to be careful about how far you go, and that’s understanding the competitive impacts and maybe you bring more teams into the conversation, and you make a judgment because … a game that may not have that same type of leverage, if you will, or that same type of value because both teams could be in [the playoff].
“That’s minimal, but the ability to bring more teams into the conversation would have [to create] value in the regular season. Some of that you can quantify, some of that strikes me as a matter of judgment.”
Sankey went out of his way to dull the rhetoric surrounding any kind of SEC breakaway. If the league begins writing some of its own rules, he stressed that that’s not a new thing.
“Every time we come here, to my reference of my last 20-plus years, we talk about our own rules,” Sankey mentioned. “So, the fact we’re talking about our own rules isn’t anything new.”
He added there’s no perfect system to oversee college sports and mentioned there needs to be constant reminders that change is hard.
“To move away from that system that worked well into something much different has been a healthy exercise,” he mentioned. “But those of us that knew the then and the now have to constantly check ourselves, not just to go back to the old way of thinking. And that kind of transition in leadership is challenging.”
ESPN’s Heather Dinich contributed reporting.
