Greg Sankey Ups the Ante in the SEC-Big Ten Pissing Contest

If the 2025 college football season is anything like the offseason, we’re in for a real treat. The practices haven’t even started, yet the Big Ten and SEC have resorted to name-calling in their unending feud over the future of college football.

Spring Meetings set the table for the talking points. After tasting a few appetizers, the coaches and commissioners picked different main courses. Now they’re chastising each other over their choices. It’s childish, but it makes for great theater.

To trace the entire history of this back-and-forth would be a Sisyphean task. Adam Luckett detailed some of the back-and-forth over each league’s preference for the future of the College Football Playoff and the Transfer Portal.

In short, the Big Ten wants to force the SEC’s hand. They aren’t willing to negotiate a new CFP format if the SEC doesn’t move to 9-conference games. The SEC is unwilling to add another conference game if the CFP doesn’t weigh strength of schedule more heavily in its equation. Greg Sankey hammered home the strength of the SEC schedule in his opening remarks in Atlanta last week.

Punxsutawney Petitti finally emerged from his lair & saw his shadow, meaning 6 more weeks (or longer) of uncertainty about College Football Playoff. Big Ten commish wants auto qualifiers & "great" 6-3 league teams in playoff. Play-in games have little to do w/rewarding good…

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) July 24, 2025

After hearing the SEC talk, the Big Ten is now flexing its muscles in Vegas. They’ve got a strong hand to play after winning back-to-back National Championships. The pointed rhetoric that struck a cord with Sankey.

James Franklin has experience in both leagues and he’s liked in neither. The Penn State head coach took his usual stance, a high and mighty one, by calling out the SEC in a manner which you normally only see in the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry.

“That other conference, when they have their [spring] meetings, there’s essentially a press conference every single day at the end of the meetings,” said Franklin. “It keeps people talking about that conference at a time of the year that makes them relevant. We’re not doing that. We need to be talking about the Big Ten and our programs and the things we have done, and making it as accessible to everybody as we possibly can, and connecting with the fans.” 

He refused to call the SEC by name. That inspired a savvy response from Sankey.

Greetings from That Other Conference pic.twitter.com/KFPzTRiMQY

— Greg Sankey (@GregSankey) July 25, 2025

Say what you want about Sankey, but that’s exactly how you’re supposed to use social media.

It’s unfortunate that the game we love is being run by people who can’t see the forest through the trees. Nevertheless, it’s wildly entertaining to watch from afar as we prepare for another season on the gridiron.

If there’s one lesson to learn from all of this, it’s that we’re nowhere near a compromise between the leagues. Change is happening rapidly in so many aspects of the sport. The biggest changes won’t happen until these children quit calling each other names and find a way to meet in the middle beneath an old Georgia pine.