Commissioner Greg Sankey hits key topics at SEC Media Days

SEC Media Days are underway and Commissioner Greg Sankey has concluded his annual state of the union address. Sankey touched on a few key topics around the SEC and college football as a whole.

He opened with a brief statement that highlighted where he feels things are for the conference.

SEC is a ‘superconference’

Sankey got out of the gate, highlighting that 2024 was the SEC’s first season as a 16-team conference. Conferences are becoming much larger entities. Programs work to latch on and stay in the lucrative umbrellas that these power conferences provide.

Sankey teased that the SEC is now one of the first ‘super conferences’.

“There is joy embedded in what we do, and we take pride in what was accomplished last year,” Sankey said. “Our first as a 16-member, what I think is a “superconference,” for all those of you who like to speculate about superconferences, welcome to one.

“We have common-sense geography, restored rivalries, and record-breaking viewership,” Sankey continued. “In fact, I asked for some data this weekend. If you take the consumed viewership hours on linear TV, almost 40 percent of that viewership was focused on games involving Southeastern Conference universities and teams. Big Ten was next, right around 30 percent. That means with those two conferences, just over two-thirds of the total viewership of college football is embedded between the SEC and the Big Ten.”

Plans to attack the new world of college athletics

Sankey highlighted that he is consistently getting questions about the transfer portal, the College Football Playoff, NCAA Tournament size for basketball, conference game schedule, athlete and coach gambling and athlete eligibility.

Sankey confirmed that two in-person meetings and ‘numerous video conferences’ have taken place with athletic directors from the SEC and Big Ten as a part of the advisory council between the two conferences.

The SEC commissioner expressed a further desire to continue to work with the athletic directors and presidents around the country to find solutions to the aforementioned topics. There have been personnel changes that have slowed some of the process, but Sankey expects things to revamp soon.

The NCAA house settlement is something that Sankey has also seen a heavy interest in. He likened it to a marathon and noted that there are still some kinks to work out.

“As it relates to the settlement, I thought it appropriate to use a bit of a metaphor for running a marathon,” Sankey said. “I have run and finished 41 marathons in my lifetime. It’s been a while, but I do remember the importance of getting it off to the right kind of start. That doesn’t mean you feel great in the first two miles, nor does it mean, transitioning that metaphor, that everything works perfectly in the first two weeks of settlement implementation. There’s been plenty of naysayers in the last 14 days, but the settlement went into effect July 1st, and we’re here July 14th while working through historic and transformational change.

Programs making transition to revenue-sharing era

“We’re in the middle of change, and in the middle of anything significant, it will get messy,” Sankey continued. “That doesn’t mean you leave. In a marathon, it doesn’t mean you step off the course because myself, as poorly as I may have felt sometimes after two or three miles, I recall that those moments might actually produce the best efforts. The burden of making a new system work is certainly on commissioners and conference offices — we still have to work through the implementation, but the burden is shared by presidents and chancellors, athletics directors and coaches. It’s also shared by those around our programs.

Decision on conference schedule coming soon

“I’ve been careful about giving dates,” Sankey said. “I said repeatedly that I learned during COVID that you want to use your time. It won’t linger terribly much longer. We have to make decisions about the ’26 season and adjust. If we’re going to go to nine games, then there have to be games moved or rescheduled. If we stay at eight, probably a little easier on that part of the logistics. Once we make a decision in the conference office, we’re pretty much ready to go. If you go back to when we made our last decision. It was in Destin, and two weeks later, we had opponents out. Shortly thereafter, we were prepared with dates and sites sort of thing.”

Current format for College Football Playoff could remain

“The Big Ten has a different view,” Sankey said. “That’s fine. We have a 12-team playoff, five conference champions. That could stay if we can’t agree. I think there’s this notion that there has to be this magic moment and something has to happen with expansion and it has to be forced, no. I think, when you’re given authority, you want to be responsible in using that authority. I think both of us are prepared to do so.”

College football is not dead, but strained

“Let me be clear. From my perspective, college athletics is not broken. College athletics is not broken. It is under stress. It is strained.”