NEW ORLEANS — When Greg Sankey arrived in New Orleans for Sunday’s showdown between Florida State and LSU, it had been an incredible 72 hours for the SEC commissioner.
Not only had his league gone an impressive 13-0 in Week 1 competition capped off by dominating performances by No. 1 Alabama and No. 3 Georgia, but Florida pulled off a spectacular upset of No. 7 Utah in the Swamp Saturday night.
“It’s always good to get off to a good start,” Sankey told the Orlando Sentinel.
Tucked into those three days was the surprising news that the College Football Playoff’s Board of Managers voted unanimously to approve the proposed 12-team playoff expansion plan Friday.
The move brought a quick resolution to a topic that the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick have debated vigorously for over a year.
Sankey was a member of a four-man working group that included former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson and Swarbrick, who recommended the 12-team expansion plan last July. Initially, it was met with approval.
However, things quickly deteriorated when Texas and Oklahoma announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. The move started another round of realignment, eventually leading to 22 schools changing conferences.
For Sankey, the resolution could be seen as vindication.
“The short answer is yes and maybe that magnifies the bewilderment of the approach over the last 12 months,” Sankey said. “It’s unfortunate we lost time to deal with some of the details that Jack, Bob, Craig and myself knew needed to be addressed as opposed to wrestling where things weren’t competitive.”
Thoughts for possible expansion of the Playoff before the end of the current 12-year deal with ESPN in 2026 were squashed when conferences like the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 pushed back, citing concerns over uncertain futures with realignment and ongoing issues with name, image and likeness legislation and the transfer portal.
With the Playoff Management Committee, comprised of the commissioners, in a stalemate, it was up to the Playoff’s Board of Managers, which consists of school presidents, to step in and make the final decision.
“Rather than try to dig in, we’ve just said no, we’re not going to expand,” Sankey said of the stalemate among commissioners. “The Presidents were clear in January 2019 that they are going to make the decision and this January, when the Management Committee could not come to an agreement, the president said we’re going to keep working on that and they did what they said.”
The unanimous decision by the board means expansion can happen as soon as 2024 but no later than 2026.
Sankey and the Management Committee are meeting in Dallas this week to try hammering out the details and possibly work toward an earlier date.
“There’s an opportunity now,” Sankey said. “But I have some issues that need to be addressed and I’ve made those known since we walked away.
“There are some practical matters, like the notion of first-round games on campus was a concept from our working group, but we have to dig into the academic calendar, the NFL schedule, the regular season and the after-season conference schedule to make sure that we can do what we’ve envisioned.”
Other issues the Management Committee plans to visit are contractual issues involving the New Year’s Six bowl games. The Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Rose and Sugar bowls have hosted the two semifinal games on a rotating basis since 2014. The group would also look at sites currently set to host the National Championship games, including Miami in 2026, and those dates might have to change.
The billion-dollar question facing the committee would be the television contract, which would need to be reworked with the possibility of a bidding war between networks on future deals.
Texas, Oklahoma’s status
New Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark announced last week that the league was opening up conversations with ESPN and Fox on a possible extension of its current media rights deal, which expires in 2025. Part of those talks reportedly could center on the future of Texas and Oklahoma.
Both schools are scheduled to join the SEC by 2025, but could a new deal predicate a sooner move?
“It’s not up to me, it’s not up to us, per se,” Sankey said. “It’s been mentioned identified, but the appropriate thing for us is to watch and see what happens.”
According to Sankey, any decision to move up the move date would have to come from the schools and the Big 12.
