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SEC's Greg Sankey fires back at ACC, Big 12 commissioners amid playoff debate

On3 imageby: Ira Schoffel05/27/25iraschoffel
greg sankey
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey (Vasha Hunt-Imagn Images)

So much for ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips’ belief that the Power Four commissioners are in a “nice rhythm” of cooperation and that they’re all “committed to trying to work together.”

Less than two weeks after Phillips made those comments at the conclusion of the ACC’s spring meetings at Amelia Island, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey took a decidedly different tone at the start of his conference meetings on Monday.

When a reporter from The Associated Press asked about other conferences (the ACC and Big 12) pushing for him to consider “the greater good of college football” and not just the SEC’s interests when the College Football Playoff expands to 16 teams, Sankey fired back at the other conference leaders.

“I don’t lecture others about good of the game and coordinating press releases about good of the game, OK,” Sankey said. “You can issue your press statement, but I’m actually looking for ideas to move us forward.”

What apparently irritated Sankey were comments last week from Phillips and Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark after the College Football Playoff decided to switch to a straight-seeding model for 2025. Instead of giving the four highest-ranked conference champions first-round byes, as was the case last year, that honor will now go to the CFP committee’s top four seeds, regardless of conference.

That move could potentially be detrimental to the ACC and Big 12 — if it had been in place last year, SEC schools Georgia and Texas and Big Ten programs Oregon and Penn State would have taken all four of the top spots — but Phillips and Yormark both said they voted for the change in the name of the greater good.

“Today’s decision was done in the best interest of the sport,” Phillips said in a message to reporters last week. “It may not always benefit the ACC, but it was the right decision and that’s a responsibility I take very seriously.”

“Today’s decision might not be the best thing for the Big 12, but it was the best thing for college football,” Yormark said in his statement. “I hope what’s best for college football continues to be the priority in any discussions moving forward.”

While Sankey didn’t say it directly, he appeared bothered by the implication that the SEC and Big Ten are not taking the same approach when pushing for four automatic bids apiece in the future 16-team College Football Playoff. Those leagues are reportedly pushing for a model that would give the ACC and Big 12 just two automatic bids apiece — half as many as the SEC and Big Ten — leaving one for the six smaller conferences and then three at-large berths.

The ACC and Big 12 reportedly are pushing for three bids apiece or for a model where only the conference champions get automatic berths.

But Sankey said the other conference commissioners haven’t suggested any solution that is palatable to the schools he works for.

“I think about the rest of college football, more broadly, all the time,” he said. “I’m open to (CFP) ideas, there’s just not a lot of incoming. My phone’s not running off the hook with, ‘Hey, here’s another way to look at it.’ … Our athletic directors are telling me we’ve given too much away (in the CFP) to arrive at these political compromises. How many of those compromises does it take?”

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