SEC commissioner Greg Sankey talks CFP expansion, conference championships and the football calendar

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was seen as the driving force in one postseason expansion: the NCAA Tournament. Now that it’s official, the ball may be in Sankey’s lap, or at least his conference’s lap, on the College Football Playoff.

“I’ve become an easy target over the years,” Sankey said.

And as he wraps up his 12th year as commissioner, Sankey is preparing for a key few weeks, when the conference’s direction on a number of key issues will be discussed: its preference on the CFP, the future of the football conference championship game, and the desire by a number within the SEC to make their own rules.

Sankey spoke for an hour Monday at the Associated Press Sports Editors Southeast Regional meeting at the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. Here are the five most noteworthy things Sankey weighed in on:

1. Playoff size: 16 or 24?

This time last year, Sankey and the SEC were the swing vote between competing 16-team ideas: the Big Ten’s desire for multiple automatic bids for conferences, and everyone else’s preference for five conference champions plus 11 at-large bids. The SEC sided with the latter, and the result was no agreement, and a third year of the 12-team field.

Now, it appears support has swung towards the Big Ten’s 24-team idea, and the SEC may be the holdout. So the question may be whether the SEC will hold firm or whether there’s enough support within the conference to agree to a 24-team field.

That’s a discussion that will be held within the conference, Sankey said, including over the next few weeks at SEC spring meetings. And key to that in his mind is whether it will enhance or harm the importance of the regular season.

Sankey indicated they’ve done research to show a 16-team playoff would not diminish the regular season. Sankey called a 24-team field an “unknown.”

“There are a lot of ideas out there that have to be supported with analysis and information, not speculation,” Sankey said. “And with something as important as a regular season in football, hey, if you can build the regular season and build the postseason through expansion in a different way, awesome, let’s get to that. But let’s understand that.”

The expansion to 12 has as much as tripled the number of teams that began November with playoff hopes, by Sankey’s estimation. A concern for Sankey is whether expansion would reach a point where teams would rest key players in regular-season games.

“That has to be fully understood (in any expansion),” Sankey said. “At any level of expansion, there will be games that didn’t matter that will matter. But there’s another side to that coin.”

2. Future of SEC championship

The momentum is certainly on the side of getting rid of the SEC championship, with Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne voicing the view of many when he said in early April the game has “run its course.” Georgia coach Kirby Smart, whose team has won the last two SEC championship games, said he would be fine getting rid of it if the Playoff field expanded to 24.

Competitively, it does make sense. Financially, it’s more complicated. The game always gets big TV ratings and, with other revenue, brings the SEC an estimated $50 million per year, perhaps more.

Sankey didn’t talk money Monday. He focused instead on what the Playoff model will look like. Essentially, he reiterated the SEC championship is not dead — it just depends.

“We haven’t picked the model. There are plenty of models out there, utilizing right now we have contracts (for conference championship games),” Sankey said. “If the model changes, we’ll have to answer the questions differently.”

Asked how important keeping a championship game would be in deciding the future Playoff model, Sankey smiled and said it was a question he wouldn’t answer.

3. NCAA Tournament backlash

Sankey has, over the last few years, been the face of the unpopular push to expand the NCAA basketball tournaments. That wasn’t because Sankey was alone, but because he speaks publicly more than other commissioners. It finally happened last week, with both men’s and women’s tournaments going to 76 games next season.

That will give eight more at-large spots to SEC teams such as Auburn and Oklahoma, which were among the final teams out of the men’s field this March. But critics say it will water down the tournament, lessen the importance of the regular season, and risk the popularity of the tournament itself, which is geared around people filling out a clean 64-team bracket.

Sankey was asked if expansion was necessary.

“Did I think it was necessary?” Sankey said, repeating the question. “Necessary would convey it’s do or die. So in that vein, no.”

Sankey referred to 10 SEC teams making this year’s men’s tournament, and 14 the year before.

But then he also referred to two of his teams just being on the outside. He said his view is the top 50 teams should be in the tournament. Given the number of mid-major and low-major conference champions that get bids, Sankey felt expansion gets them to those top 50.

He also pointed to instances of teams going from the First Four round in Dayton and making runs, even to the Final Four. The expansion by eight teams will create “another Dayton,” as Sankey put it.

“The apple cart is not being burned, upset and thrown down the hill and discarded. It’s a bit of change,” Sankey said.

4. Calendar: AFCA call to end season around Jan. 8

Future national championship games are scheduled to end in late January, including Jan. 25 this season. Many in the sport would love to roll that back: The American Football Coaches Association said last week it prefers the season end the second Monday in January.

That statement, which also included calls for “maximizing” the playoff field and getting rid of conference championship games, caught Sankey by surprise.

“The press release in particular was kind of disappointing,” Sankey said. “I had seen (AFCA executive director) Craig (Bohl) a couple weeks ago. I know he has my cellphone number. But it would’ve been nice to have a conversation about the rationale for their statement and maybe the rationale for some of those decisions.”

As for the calendar, Sankey pointed to the Army-Navy game being on the weekend after conference championship games. And there’s also going head-to-head with NFL games, which Sankey said he’s discussed with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

“If you’re going to compress the schedule, you’re going to have some of those issues,” Sankey said.

5. SEC making its own rules

There remains internal discussion — and external desire — about whether the SEC should make and enforce its own rules on issues such as tampering. That stems from a continuing frustration with the slowness in NCAA investigations, or rules not being enforced at all. That includes against the SEC’s own teams, with Ole Miss under investigation after Clemson accused it of tampering.

Sankey pointed to when the Big Ten, with whom the SEC had seeming sympathy on this issue, sent a letter asking the NCAA to suspend tampering rules given the changes in the environment.

“We didn’t send a letter, but our communication was you need to fix the definitions of how they’re applied before you start running down the road from an enforcement standpoint, and do that quickly. That hasn’t happened,” Sankey said. “You’ve heard some of our campus leaders say we should set our own policies. … Does that continue to occupy people’s minds? Absolutely.”