Greg Sankey addresses his feelings on College Football Playoff selection process: 'You're never satisfied'

The penultimate College Football Playoff rankings are out. Now, with just one weekend of conference championship games remaining before the final rankings are revealed, everyone is politicking for position in the rankings. Meanwhile, the actual selection process has fallen under even further scrutiny.

Recently, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey addressed the job the College Football Playoff selection committee has done to this point. Admittedly, he’s never satisfied, but it’s also Sankey’s job to look to improve the system and improve the SEC’s position within that system.

“I respect that they’ve been assigned that,” Sankey said. “You use the word satisfied. When you’re me, you’re never satisfied. You’re always trying to figure out, well, I think there should be more, and I’ve had different views on outcomes over the years. This is an incredibly strong conference and incredibly deep conference. We, as a staff, I think, are thorough and effective at providing information through the agreed-upon channels. We respect that we have charged the selection committee with making those decisions. We’ll see what happens on Sunday.”

Based on the most recent Playoff rankings, the SEC currently has five teams in the field. That’s before conference championship weekend, which could shake things up, too. That would, in a five-team field, be the most teams of any conference this year, a year after the Big Ten got one more team into the Playoff. Just behind that group, another two SEC teams are in the First Four Out.

At his press conference, Sankey was asked if there could be any changes in the selection process in the future. The short answer is, yes. There have been changes in the past, too, but it’s not just what the SEC is looking for in those debates.

“Is there room? We spend time in an annual analysis of the selection process and outcomes,” Sankey said. “Members of the committee, later in the spring, are available for dialogue with the CFP management committee. That produces questions. You saw the introduction of a different strength of schedule analysis and a strength of record metric that are used. I think it’s important for us to understand how those are used to dig in more to the evaluation. I also think more about the metrics that are used, and are those rated properly. Those are things that can only be learned when decisions are made, but I look forward to that conversation. Is there room to make adjustment? We just saw that there were some adjustments introduced last year, and that would be an indication of yes. The process for agreeing upon those involves more people than only me.”

Moving forward, Sankey is still going to advocate for the SEC in the postseason. In a rapidly changing landscape, it’s just a matter of what that landscape looks like that could change his needs.