Greg Sankey offers latest thoughts on Playoff expansion, other commissioners’ ‘frame of mind’
By Keith Farner
Published:
Greg Sankey has long held a firm position on College Football Playoff expansion that the SEC is just fine with remaining at 4 teams. However, the SEC commissioner is set for another upcoming meeting with other conference commissioners to discuss the matter.
Sankey shared his latest thoughts on expansion with Sirius XM College and said while conversations are coming, a “decision point” is not solely up to him.
“I’ll walk in, because we’ve had a number of healthy conversations with our conference membership, I’ll walk in prepared to make a decision,” he said. “We’ve not been in a circumstance to do that as a group so far, and perhaps that can happen. I always temper my expectations, because I think this is an important decision that deserves the utmost care.”
Sankey, Bob Bowlsby of the Big 12, Craig Thompson of the Mountain West and Jack Swarbrick, the Notre Dame athletics director proposed the 12-team playoff model in June, which would guarantee spots to the 6 highest-ranked conference champions as well as at-large bids to the next 6 highest-ranked teams.
At issue it seems are agreements over the automatic qualifiers, but overall, there is no unanimous consensus on a specific format even as they debate if 12 teams is the best number, or should it be 8?
“I feel prepared to show up and contribute to a decision, yet I’m not certain if everyone is going to be in that frame of mind,” Sankey said.
SEC Commissioner @GregSankey joined SEC This Morning to discuss the future of College Football Playoff expansion, and how he is “prepared to make a decision”
Listen to the entire interview: https://t.co/QKZ7xbPyZG pic.twitter.com/UVYM3XcQqO
— College Sports on SiriusXM (@SXMCollege) January 5, 2022
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
