That didn’t take long.

AL.com columnist Kevin Scarbinsky, a long-time Birmingham News writer, has speculated that the SEC could one day soon move its offices out of Birmingham, Ala.

After all, the SEC football championship takes place in Atlanta. Many SEC basketball tournaments take place in Nashville. The SEC Network offices are in Charlotte, where SEC basketball media days have moved. All those events used to take place in The Magic City.

But Greg Sankey, who will take over the commissioner’s office from Mike Slive on Aug. 1, immediately shut down any talk of the office moving elsewhere during his tenure.

“I haven’t talked about that,” Sankey told AL.com of moving the SEC’s headquarters to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville or anywhere else. “I don’t know who has, but it wasn’t me.”

Sankey, a native of Auburn, N.Y., has made Birmingham his family’s home for years as the SEC’s executive associate commissioner and chief operating officer.

The SEC’s top leadership hasn’t even broached a future location change as a topic.

“I haven’t had any conversations about (Birmingham) not being (the SEC headquarters),” Sankey said, according to AL.com. “A straight-forward answer — not trying to be tricky at all.”

Legion Field isn’t suited for hosting the SEC championship football game, and wasn’t even fit for Alabama high school games or UAB games. Birmingham doesn’t have many great facilities for football or basketball. But the city does still claim SEC media days for football, an event that seems to grow every year.

In addition to being the football capital of the United States in terms of TV ratings and gambling, Birmingham is a centralized location. Programs based in Fayetteville, Ark., College Station, Texas, and Baton Rouge, La., would have a long trip East to reach headquarters in Atlanta or Charlotte. Not that it would be any terrible tragedy — as if flying as a regular part of business life is a novel concept — but it makes sense symbolically to place the headquarters in a geographical midpoint.

Plus, is there any more SEC-centric city than Birmingham? Charlotte, Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville, Orlando — other big cities within or near the SEC footprint — all have professional sports teams. Many have other cultural distractions as well, like Disney and country music. In Birmingham, the SEC is the biggest entertainment option in town.

It sounds like SEC fans can look forward to the conference remaining anchored in Birmingham for many years to come.