Greg Sankey reacts to report Big Ten wants to press SEC to expand to 9-game conference schedule

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been a busy man this week with the annual SEC meetings kicking off. It has given coaches, athletic directors and presidents in the conference the chance to weigh in on some of the most pressing issues in college sports.

But the SEC isn’t the only league to hold meetings of this nature, and what the Big Ten did Wednesday drew some attention. Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports reported that the Big Ten would be in favor of a recently proposed 16-team playoff that granted five automatic bids and 11 at-large bids, but only if the SEC moves from an eight-game conference schedule to nine.

Sankey joined the Paul Finebaum Show on Wednesday, where he was asked about the report. He didn’t speak directly to the report itself, but note the working relationship that the SEC and Big Ten have developed in recent years.

“So let’s go back to the formation of an advisory committee,” he said. “We had been in a CFP meeting where we couldn’t make decisions. That was in Houston. Then we went to a set of NCAA meetings where we just couldn’t make decisions or couldn’t take input. My frustration level peaked. I called (Big Ten commissioner) Tony (Pettiti) on a Saturday night and said, ‘What if we formed some kind of working relationship just to think about things?’ Part of our challenge right now is our presidents have left that have populated those groups so the ability to meet has been challenging. Our ADs have met. We’ve had two AD meetings. If other people want to come into that conversation, I don’t think there’s a lot of resistance to that.

“Rooms of 60 don’t solve problems though. I think even rooms of 34 don’t solve problems. So the smaller group conversations are helpful. That doesn’t mean we see the world exactly the same, but we can have an open dialogue. Tony and I talked last night and I said, ‘Hey, we had a conversation with our football coaches that went different around the CFP format than I would have predicted.’ Tony texted me when he finished an athletic directors call. I will say, I think one of the hard parts about formulating ideas and making decisions is the number of leaks that come out.”

The SEC is not the only conference that still operates under an eight-game conference schedule, as the ACC does as well. Another proposed 16-team CFP model would grant four automatic bids each to the SEC and Big Ten, two to the ACC and Big 12, one to either Notre Dame or a Group of 6 school and then three at-large bids.

But right now, the Big Ten is hesitant to move forward with any model until the SEC makes a change to its regular season scheduling. Sankey acknowledged that the two conferences might not always agree, but is confident a solution will be found.

“I accept that both conferences are gonna have different views on things,” he said. “I think Tony understands that as well. I think we’ve communicated openly and honestly and there’s been points of agreement, point of disagreement. Ideas generated that haven’t been thought one place that are thought someplace else and you’re pulled along. We’ve met in person twice as four commissioners to talk about the current issues. And that’s just in the month of May, so it’s not really exclusionary.

“It was a recognition that, ‘Wow, we’re not really making any progress through these other meetings so let’s see if we can come together.’ I just told our presidents we need to figure out how to reinvigorate the conversation because we’ve had so much change at the presidential level.”