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Greg Sankey recalls reaction to Alabama missing College Football Playoff
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Greg Sankey is in Destin, Florida for the annual SEC Spring Meetings as the conference gears up for 2025-26, but a big question from 2024-25 continues to follow the commissioner.
The College Football Playoff was a hot topic on Monday when Sankey took questions from media members. One of the questions the SEC commissioner was asked is if he was “surprised” by Alabama not making the last CFP.
Sankey called it a reality of the CFP system, noting he had considered the scenario ahead of the season.
I don’t know that I’d say surprised, I think that’s one of the realities,” Sankey said, per AL.com. “But I spoke in July at media days, asking how will a 9-3 team, and I used Georgia as a really good example given their three really difficult road games, how do you evaluated that against other teams that don’t come anywhere close to that?
“And as I said, we learned something the first time through (the 12-team playoff selection process). And that raises the need for deeper analysis and understanding. If we’re gonna just incentivize wins, playing fewer winning teams can get your to more wins. I don’t think that’s great for the football.
The CFP will follow a similar format for the 2025 season, but “straight seeding” will be used instead of the previous format giving the top 4 seeds to the 4 highest-ranked conference champions. Numerous reports over the last year have indicated that the CFP could switch to primarily automatic bids for conferences. If the SEC receives 4 auto bids, the conference is expected to adopt a 9-game conference schedule and potentially add annual games with Big Ten teams.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
