Greg Sankey continues to work on the expanded College Football Playoff, and in an interview with ESPN, Sankey spoke about helping the sport not to be so regionalized.

The key is to not only bring in programs from around the country, but also keep more programs in the hunt later in the season.

“My view is how do you bring more people into November, including in our league,” Sankey told ESPN. “Our league would be fine, even at 16 teams with a four-team playoff. At 14, we’ve taken half the field a couple of times. Nobody else has done that. When we go to 16 and add Texas and Oklahoma, we’re not going to have less opportunity by adding those two. We’re going to have more.

“But we’ve excluded the West Coast and everything west of the Rockies for all but 2 years. We want college football to be strong nationally, and I think that’s the responsibility we all have.”

Sankey’s allegiance to the SEC is clear, but that doesn’t preclude him from thinking about the sport overall.

“I’m fine if we win the championship every year, but we have a responsibility to think about the game from a bigger picture,” Sankey said. “I want to win and am not going to apologize for that, but I’m also going to challenge myself and us collectively to think about the big picture.”