SEC breakaway talk follows Greg Sankey to media days
Greg Sankey said SEC breakaway conversations are “real,” but told CBS Sports leaving the NCAA is not the league’s priority.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
3 min read
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey did not wave away the breakaway chatter when it landed at SEC media days in Tampa.
Asked whether the conference has discussed leaving the NCAA’s current structure, Sankey told reporters the conversations exist, according to CBS Sports.
“They’re real,” Sankey said. “People have talked about that. They’ve opined about the frustrations that bring them to the point of saying we should look at something significantly different. I do not believe that is a leverage point. I think that’s just honest communication.”
The comments kept alive one of the loudest offseason storylines around the Southeastern Conference: whether frustration with college sports governance could push the league toward its own setup.
Breakaway talk started before Tampa
The idea was already in the air at the SEC’s spring meetings in Destin, Florida, in May. CBS Sports reported that Georgia president Jere Morehead said the conference needed to consider its options, especially if proposed federal legislation failed to bring the solutions the league has sought.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart backed that view in May. “I’ve said this for a long time now...I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find rules that everybody plays by, then we should play our own,” Smart said, according to CBS Sports. “I’m not afraid of that.”
Sankey later gave CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello a softer landing point for the conversation. He said walking out of the NCAA would likely send the league back to Congress for another discussion.
“So, my observation to our league is that’s not a priority for us,” Sankey told CBS Sports. “And so, the headline that’s developed, that there’s some breakaway being considered, that’s not actually what the answer was. There are frustrations, informing the ask that there has to be a better way, and we’re trying to work to improve the system.”
A threat with a different feel
CBS Sports columnist John Talty wrote that some people inside the SEC insist the frustration is genuine and that the conference could strike out on its own. Talty also reported that skeptics outside the SEC see the talk as a pressure tactic.
The SEC and Big Ten have already used the possibility of splitting off in College Football Playoff talks, according to CBS Sports, gaining power after threatening to walk away.
Talty argued the SEC’s leverage does not look quite the same now. He noted that the Big Ten has won the last three national championships, and that the Big Ten’s preferred 24-team playoff format has drawn support from the ACC and Big 12 while the SEC has pushed a different expansion vision.
The SEC remains a major television draw, CBS Sports noted, and its biggest rivalries would still command attention. But Talty wrote that a split could revive the old problem of disputed national champions, pointing to the 2003 season, when LSU and USC each claimed a share of the title.
Sankey’s 2020 example
Talty also connected the current debate to Sankey’s role during the COVID-19-affected 2020 season. CBS Sports reported that the SEC, ACC and Big 12 eventually played that fall with changes, including an SEC conference-only schedule, after the Big Ten and Pac-12 initially postponed their seasons.
Sankey told Talty last year that college football had continued through major national and global crises, including world wars, the 1917 pandemic he identified as Spanish flu, the stock market crash and civil unrest in 2020.
For now, Sankey’s public line is frustration, not departure. The SEC is talking about something different, according to its commissioner, while saying its priority is to improve the system it is still in.
This story draws on original reporting from CBS Sports.