SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey Ready to Explore New Waters of College Sports

DALLAS (AP) — Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey unofficially opened the league’s first football season in League of 16 teams Monday in a sprawling hotel ballroom in North Texas, a new setting for SEC Media Days at a time when everything about college sports seems to be in constant flux.

“It’s time to update your expectations of what college sports can be,” Sankey said, kicking off the four-day event.

The powerful SEC, which has had 13 college football national champions since 2006, now includes Texas and Oklahoma. It’s one of many changes coming to college football this year, with many more to come.

“As leaders, we are responsible for navigating what are truly uncharted waters for us of change in college athletics,” Sankey said.

The 59-year-old commissioner stressed that college sports must find solutions from within while acknowledging the external pressures of lawsuits and politicians that complicate the situation.

“But the reality is there is no silver bullet to solve the problems we face. There is no silver bullet. Any time you go through a reset, it’s difficult,” Sankey said.

Perhaps the most dramatic changes are still underway. In late May, the NCAA and the power conferences agreed to within the framework of a regulation The settlement includes $2.8 billion in damages to be paid by the NCAA and an unprecedented commitment by conferences to allow their schools to share a percentage of athletic revenue with their athletes.

“We are literally working to achieve what would normally be a decade of change in a matter of months,” Sankey said.

Sankey said new revenue streams will be needed, but he cautioned against college sports executives giving up control in exchange for money, a not-so-subtle reference to private equity.

“We’ve had incredible success, and I understand why so many people outside of campus and the conference world are interested in coming and participating, but it’s our responsibility to involve people in the solution, not to cede authority to outside actors,” Sankey said.

BIG ENOUGH?

At the start of a roughly 30-minute opening statement, Sankey dropped a line that gained traction on social media and prompted some follow-up questions.

“Sixteen is our today, and sixteen is our tomorrow,” he said, referring to the size of the newly expanded conference.

After three years of tumultuous and transformative conference reorganization, relative peace has been achieved on this front in 2024. But the instability of any conference fuels speculation.

In the Atlantic Coast Conference, Florida State and Clemson sued the league, challenging agreements that tie schools to the league with hundreds of millions of dollars in potential exit fees and penalties.

Sankey made it clear that his interest in the ACC litigation was only as an observer.

“As I said, we’re focused on our 16. I said it at Media Days, I’m not a recruiter,” he said. “Our presidents have made it clear that I’m not going to get involved in any expansion-related litigation. So I’m paying attention, but I’m not involved in those discussions.”

Sankey was asked to clarify the 16th today, the 16th tomorrow. Was that a reference to the long-term future of the SEC?

“The last three questions are part of reality, that is, I have already answered three times the question of where our attention is. Our attention is on our 16 members. I have a responsibility to pay attention to that, and I am certainly not going to fuel speculation about what will happen next,” he said.

“We can certainly stay at 16 for a very, very long time and have incredible success.”

Due to a massive reorganization, the Big 12 has 16 teams, the Big Ten has 18, and the ACC now has schools in Dallas and the California Bay Area. The Pac-12 is a two-team league, struggling to survive.

The decision by Texas and Oklahoma to join the SEC was the first domino to fall in 2021, a move that doesn’t seem as drastic compared to the others that followed.

“We know who we are, and the Southeastern Conference, we’re the only conference at this level where the name still means something, the southeastern part of the United States, where when we expanded we actually restored historic rivalries while adding just 100 miles to the longest campus-to-campus trip our student-athletes will ever experience,” Sankey said.

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Follow Ralph D. Russo on https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP

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