Greg Sankey singles out Wake Forest, Nebraska in discussion of losing college football rivalries

Losing college football rivalries/scheduled games due to the impact of seeding criteria for the College Football Playoff has become a major problem, according to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey.

Sankey discussed the issue on the June 2 edition of the Dan Patrick Show.

“I’ve been the recipient of plenty of side comments about good of the game,” Sankey told Patrick. “When programs like when Wake Forest notifies Ole Miss the day before their first game of a home-and-home series and says that they’re not playing the one back in Oxford, that’s a problem. When Nebraska cancels an agreement to play Tennessee home-and-home and cites the College Football Playoff selection process as a fundamental reason why, we have to understand the College Football Playoff selection process is threatening the regular season and not supporting it.”

Ole Miss went to Wake Forest last season and dominated the Demon Deacons 40-6 in the first of what was two scheduled games between the programs. Much like Sankey however, Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin was extremely upset about Wake Forest buying out the second game in the planned home-and-home.

Cancellation made Kiffin very upset

“Really, a very abnormal thing for Wake [Forest] to do,” Lane Kiffin said last season. “You usually don’t do that in the season before. It’s hard. There’s not people to play. It’s why you do scheduling in advance, and you make deals, and you go and play there, and they come back.

“I would just say that’s rarely ever done. I’ve never really heard of doing it, and it really puts us at a big disadvantage. And it is what it is. Obviously, it wasn’t appreciated very much to put is in that situation. And now we got to go find somebody and most people are all scheduled up. And even when you find them, you got to go pay them. So, it’s kind of an unwritten rule not to do that actually.”

Sankey wants to incentivize playing highly desired games

The same situation occurred, like Sankey said, with Tennessee and Nebraska last season. However, Nebraska AD Troy Dannen did at least give a reason.

“We are making plans to embark on major renovations of Memorial Stadium that may impact our seating capacity for the 2027 season,” Dannen said. “The best scenario for us is to have eight home games in 2027 to offset any potential revenue loss from a reduced capacity.”

Greg Sankey however doesn’t seem to buy that argument.

“Whether people agree or not, the first issue that needs to be addressed is the selection criteria incentivizing playing these highly competitive, highly desired games whether its non-conference or conference. The second is I think conferences coming together to facilitate the scheduling is important. We facilitate four end of year non-conference games in the last week of the season. We’ve had schools actually leave our league and come back and we’ve facilitated those games when they’ve wanted to play. From my perspective, I’m happy to have a coordinated conversation to try and get scheduling right.”