SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Thursday that the conference is leaning heavily on moving away from the 2-division model with the upcoming introduction of Texas and Oklahoma, scheduled for 2025.

Instead, Sankey said the conference was leaning towards having all 16 teams in 1 conference without divisions as the Big 12 does. This would mean doing away with the 4-team pod model that was suggested as an alternative.

Obviously, no final decision has yet been made. However, coming from the mouth of Sankey is as close as you can get at this point in time. It is worth noting that Sankey effectively insinuated this in June, but revamped it Thursday. 

Moving away from the 2-division model is not technically necessary, but it would cause some tough problems if it stayed. For example, would you split Texas and Oklahoma into the East and West separately like Missouri and Texas A&M a decade ago? If so, how would scheduling change?

Even now there are plenty of questions to doing away with divisions, most still focused on scheduling, tiebreakers and the preservation of classic rivalries.