“Let me be clear — college athletics is not broken, but it is strained,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said during his opening address to kick off the conference’s media days in Atlanta Monday morning.
As the college sports landscape undergoes rapid changes, Sankey explained his main goal has not changed as he tries to put his conference in the best position to succeed amid the arrival of revenue sharing and expected changes to the College Football Playoff format.
“The settlement went into effect July 1 and it’s July 14 while working through historic and transformed change,” Sankey said Monday from Atlanta. “In the middle of anything significant, it will get messy. That doesn’t mean you leave or in a marathon, it doesn’t mean you step off the course. The burden of making a new system work is certainly on commissioners and conference offices, but the responsibility is shared with our campuses and campus leaders.”
Sankey said conversations with university presidents this spring included the potential of the Power Four forming a committee to explore its role in the future of college athletics. The committee, Sankey cited, would include multiple presidents from each league and the commissioners for each league.
On College Football Playoff expansion
Sankey was complimentary of the playoff’s straight-seeding model adopted ahead of the 2025 season. Under the new seeding process, the top four teams in the selection committee’s final rankings get a first-round pass to the quarterfinals.
Last season, the four highest-ranked conference champions earned that distinction regardless of where those teams were slotted by the selection committee. He also advocated for expansion of the field in the future.
“We think growth beyond 12 can be positive…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/2025-sec-media-days-greg-sankey-cagey-on-cfp-expansion-nine-game-schedule-as-changes-strain-college-sports/
Author : Brad Crawford
Publish date : 2025-07-14 14:22:00
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