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SEC down to only tarnished Texas as Greg Sankey surely wonders what went wrong
By David Wasson
Published:
The Notre Dame Victory March echoed through the cavernous Superdome over and over again Thursday night, surely ringing through the ears of Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey as he contemplated what had just occurred.
Moments earlier on the temporary platform in front of a national television audience, it wasn’t one of the SEC’s signature programs celebrating a spot in the College Football Playoff semifinals. It wasn’t wunderkind coach Kirby Smart, whose Georgia Bulldogs survived a rollicking 2024 conference roller coaster to win the conference title and earn a bye to this point.
Instead, as Notre Dame was celebrating under confetti and booking plans to Miami, the Bulldogs were silently packing up and wondering what just hit them.
Surely so, too, was Sankey – the bespectacled boss of the biggest, baddest conference in the land. If it just means more in the SEC, what does it mean that the SEC was only a bogus non-penalty from perhaps being completely shut out of the Playoff just halfway through?
Almost none of the 2024 Playoff went according to plan for Sankey and the SEC. First, Ole Miss and Alabama both choked away potential Playoff spots down the stretch – leaving Sankey to fume and fuel the complaint that strength of scheduled needed to be more of a factor in determining the Lucky 12.
The SEC had to “settle” for just 3 Playoff spots, as No. 9 Tennessee and No. 5 Texas were consigned to first-round games – with the Vols facing the indignity of going on the road to play No. 8 Ohio State. Unfortunately for the crux of that strength of schedule argument, the Volunteers and their stronger schedule laid an absolute egg against the Buckeyes in a 42-17 loss.
Still, the SEC had Texas – which rolled past No. 12 Clemson 38-24 in its opener – and the Bulldogs both in the quarterfinals. All the Longhorns and Bulldogs had to do was take care of business ringing in 2025 and Sankey’s super-conference would be sitting pretty with half of the first real Final Four.
Right?
Wrong.
First, precisely no one told Big 12 champ Arizona State they were playing the role of the Washington Generals to Texas’ Harlem Globetrotters. Behind running back/battering ram Cam Skattebo, the Sun Devils gave the Longhorns all kinds of fits in Atlanta.
Yes, Texas prevailed in a 39-31 double-OT thriller, but Arizona State had a legitimate gripe that an obvious targeting call didn’t go their way that would have well changed the outcome. If Texas defensive back Michael Taaffe was penalized for targeting on a play that has been targeting pretty much since the moment targeting became a penalty, Arizona State would have earned a first down deep in Texas territory with a chance to win the game in regulation.
Whether word got filtered through the headset to keep Texas alive, or both replay officials and referee Larry Smith from the Big Ten somehow suffered simultaneous blindness – there was no penalty assessed. Play on, boys.
And so what if Texas dodged disaster to advance to the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 10 against Penn State. The SEC still had mighty Georgia to make it all right in New Orleans. The Sugar Bowl is home territory for the SEC, after all, and the Playoff committee sent Georgia there on the strength of winning the super-sized 16-team conference and earning the No. 2 overall seed.
Georgia also got that seemingly all-important extra week of rest, recovery and planning – while Notre Dame had to slug it out in the freezing cold against Indiana the week prior. All signs pointed toward an SEC coronation, albeit one delayed a day due to tragic events in the nearby French Quarter.
Again, though, no one seemed to inform Notre Dame. Irish boss Marcus Freeman and his staff coached circles around Smart and his staff, and Notre Dame looked less like a team that was still thawing out from its first-round appearance and more like a team ready to go very deep.
Et tu, Greg Sankey? Not only did the commish try to retroactively bully the Playoff process via tweet, but now we sit with just a tarnished Texas team as the SEC’s sole representative. This isn’t a post-mortem on the conference, of course, as moving forward there will be plenty of teams rise up to make national championship runs.
But Thursday night, as Irish eyes were smiling and Georgia fans muttered to themselves about the 14-karat whipping they just witnessed, it sure felt like the SEC was taking a standing-8 count.
And Sankey? It’s back to the drawing board to try and cloak-room negotiate new paths for the SEC to choke off more Playoff spots in the future than it received in 2024.
An APSE national award-winning writer and page designer, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
