ATLANTA — Greg Sankey is not one to rush decisions, but where the future SEC scheduling model is concerned, the commissioner realizes there is a time element.
Sankey told reporters at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Saturday while in attendance for the Georgia-Oregon game that there are no certain timelines where SEC scheduling or CFP expansion is concerned.
“We can make a decision when our campuses need our decisions to be made,” Sankey said, asked how early the SEC could move to a nine-game schedule.
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“In Destin we were poised to make a decision, (but) I think we wisely decided more time and information would be helpful to us — and we have a lot more information now than I could have predicted on Memorial Day weekend.”
The CFP Board of Managers on Friday approved a 12-team College Football Playoff format that could begin as early as 2024 or as late as after the 2026 season.
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A meeting is scheduled on Thursday in Texas to discuss how the CFP might ultimately be implemented early, but Sankey made it clear it would take a lot of work.
“If history is a lesson to help us understand the future, it won’t be easy,” Sankey said. “But minds change, motivations change.
“There’s a bunch of moving parts.”
There had been indications the SEC was ready to go from an 8-game schedule to a 9-game schedule, but the league presidents and ADs left the spring meetings in June with a stalemate on the issue.
The takeaway was the league wasn’t going to add another conference game while the CFP stood at four teams, as another challenging league matchup would diminish the SEC’s chances of getting two teams into the four-team playoff.
Sankey said the league leaders will convene again soon and review the updated details.
“We’ll gather up again this fall, talk through details which we reviewed on a few video conferences,” Sankey said.
“I don’t feel it’s imminent, but we understand the timing, as people have to adjust to non-conference scheduling.”
Sankey said if the league stays with an eight-game schedule, which does not seem likely, there won’t need to be many adjustments once Texas and Oklahoma join the conference.
The Longhorns and Sooners are currently set to join the SEC on July 1, 2025, but that could be moved up a year depending on the Big 12′s current media rights negotiations.
Sankey admits a nine-game SEC schedule would bring more complexities, so the sooner the league knows its direction, the better.
“If it’s nine games, that’s a little bit different impact on non-conference scheduling, so I’m sensitive to that timing,” Sankey said.
“To me what’s unfortunate is we could have spent the last nine months talking about this …. and we’re nine months further behind had we gotten to it in January.”
College football leadership seemed on the brink of approving the 12-team playoff in last summer.
The Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 formed an Alliance that essentially derailed the proposal.
The Big Ten, however, changed its tune after adding UCLA and USC effective 2024 and negotiating a $7 billion media rights deal.
“I didn’t think we’d be back to the story this quickly,’” Sankey said, “but we obviously are.”
