Sweet 16! Sankey happy with a 16-team Southeastern Conference

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey gives his state of the conference address (Photo by Brenden Martin)

The Readers Digest Condensed version of Greg Sankey’s State of the Conference address to the media to kick off SEC Media Days in Dallas Monday morning could be summarized this way: This is the Southeastern Conference, top to bottom the best league in the country and the one everyone else wishes they could join.

“We’ve been incredibly successful, and I understand why so many outside of the campus and conference realm are interested in coming in and being a part of it, but that responsibility lies with us to bring people into the solution, not to cede authority to external actors,” Sankey said. “We know who we are, and the Southeastern Conference, we’re the one conference at this level where the name still means something, the southeastern part of the United States, where when we expanded, we actually restored historic rivalries while adding only 100 miles to the longest campus-to-campus trip our student-athletes will experience.”

Think of it for a moment. “We know who we are … we’re the one conference at this level where the name still means something.” Those words were the equivalent of plunging an 11-inch stiletto plunged deeply into the hearts of the Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big 12.

The Big Ten. It’s 18 schools that stretch from metro New York to LA and up north to Portland and Seattle. How many of you will be burning the midnight oil to catch a thrilling Rutgers at UCLA game played before 20,000 in the 100,000-seat Rose Bowl.

The ACC. It is 17 schools that stretch from Miami to Boston on the East Coast, out to the Bay area on the Left Coast for Stanford and Cal, and deep in the heart of Texas for SMU. Boston College at Cal might not make your must see TV weekend schedule.

The Big 12. The 16 teams stretch across all four time zones, half of them made up of refugees from the Pac-12 and the American Athletic Conference. Its commissioner has intimated that more expansion might be on the way.

The Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 have created logistical nightmares while gutting the Pac-12 and leaving it on the side of the road to die.

Meanwhile, there is the Southeastern Conference led by the most powerful man in all of college athletics, now a 16-team league that is the strongest and most powerful by far in the country. Sankey spent the bulk of his address Monday extolling the virtues of the recently expanded conference with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma. By constantly mentioning that the SEC is a 16-team league, Sankey let it be known that Texas and Oklahoma aren’t country cousins invited to the party at the last second, but full-fledged members of an exclusive family.

Of course, once Sankey opened things up for questions and answers, it wasn’t long before the inevitable question poised by some brave soul about Florida State and Clemson, the would-be orphans in the Atlantic Coast Conference who are standing on the street corners at SEC and Big Ten headquarters holding “Will Work for Beer” placards.

The question wasn’t exactly direct. It was a roundabout way of asking if Sankey and the SEC are interested in expanding, but instead it went like this: “How closely are you following Florida State and Clemson’s challenge to the ACC, and if they succeed, what sort of ramifications do you see for the entire college sports landscape?”

Oh my. That ranks right just behind the guy who asked Doug Williams how long he had been a black quarterback. That actually happened.

When it comes to college sports, Greg Sankey is Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, The Nature Boy, Dusty Rhodes and The Rock rolled into one. He’s far more powerful than Charlie Baker,  the latest lightweight chosen to run the NCAA. If  Greg Sankey and the SEC get the sniffles, all the other schools make a run to Walmart to buy NyQuil in anticipation of catching a cold. So, yes, he does follow FSU, Clemson and the saga with the ACC closely.

Sankey’s response?

“I pay attention. As I said, we’re focused on our 16. I’ve said before at Media Days, I’m not a recruiter. My job is to make sure we meet the standard of excellence that we have for ourselves on a daily basis. That attracts interest. It’s done that with the two universities that we have added this year. They’re not the only phone calls I’ve ever had, but I’m not involved in recruitment. Our presidents have been clear that I am not going to entangle us in litigation around expansion. So I pay attention, but I’m not engaged in those conversations.

“In fact, as I understand, the issue is agreements have been signed, the decisions have been made among a conference, and the question is are those going to be honored as they were established? And apparently that’s for a court to decide now.”

Translation: No one held a gun to the heads of FSU and Clemson when they signed that ridiculous 20-year grant of rights contract and the only way they’ll get out is a long fight in the courts.”

It will be a lengthy fight because the ACC has made it perfectly clear they will fight as long as it takes to either keep Clemson and FSU in the league or else make them pay what their media rights payments would be for the next 12 years. Let’s say the average payout the ACC pays its member schools will average $55 million per over the next 12 years. That’s $660 million. Times Two. It will require a lot of bake sales, car washes and yard sales to raise that kind of money. That doesn’t include the cost of litigation. Lawyers love cases like this. Tons of billable hours.

Sankey probably knows down to the penny how much it would cost them to leave. He knows that while Clemson and FSU are stuck in the courts, they aren’t going anywhere. Overtures to FSU and Clemson about future membership could get the SEC dragged into never-ending litigation that will take place in North Carolina courts, which is akin to the ACC running the Dean Smith four corners to run out the clock.

This is why Sankey pointed out it is up to the courts to decide when and if Clemson and FSU can worm their way out of the grant of rights with the ACC. Put your money on the ACC winning thanks largely to the home court advantage.

As if his answer required an exclamation point, Sankey said, “I certainly don’t spend any time engaged in that recruiting activity because we’re focused on our 16, and I want to be respectful of the difficulty that’s currently faced with that issue — that set of issues within the ACC and my colleague Jim Phillips.”

There, the emphasis on 16 teams again. That should have been period, end of story, but there were a pair of follow-up questions, one of which asked if Sankey could ever foresee a time when the SEC would expand beyond the Southeastern United States and another that asked if he can see a day when the SEC expands once again.

Answering the first question, Sankey said, “You’ve seen how we’ve made decisions over the last decade plus for contiguous states to join. I think that’s incredibly wise and provides remarkable strength.”

To the second, Sankey answered, “We can certainly remain at 16 for a long, long time and be incredibly successful.”

Sankey has good reason to be content. Already the top sports league in the country, he just added an Oklahoma football program that has seven national championships and seven Heisman Trophy winners in its storied history. Texas is a legendary program that has won four national championships while producing two Heisman winners. The SEC plus Texas and Oklahoma will make the SEC more dominant in so many of the non-revenue programs, but as we all know, it is football that drives the engine. By adding Texas and Oklahoma, every football weekend is going to have a playoff feel to it, not to mention it will send SEC TV ratings through the roof.

Ratings may be a nasty word to college sports purists who still believe in the Boy Scouts amateur model, but without television, coaches would be working for a couple hundred thousand and big NIL payments might be a thousand a month. Every school in the SEC including Texas and Oklahoma will get a raise for the 2024-25 athletic year thanks to the 10-year contract with ESPN/ABC/Disney that just kicked in, probably to something like $70-$75 million. While on paper the contract with Fox, CBS and NBC is worth more per year for the 18 Big Ten teams, you can bet the farm the SEC contract will be torn up and re-written a couple of years from now as SEC ratings continue to rise and Big Ten ratings flatline.

There will be no logistical nightmare in the SEC while those East Coast to Left Coast flights taken by the Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 will take their toll both on the athletes and on travel budgets.

Now, there will be difficulties ahead but Sankey won’t be distracted by logistics and the problems of coast-to-coast leagues, he will still have to deal with such matters as the numerous anti-trust lawsuits that go well beyond the recent settlement with the House of Representatives, athletes as employees, players unions, and an out of control transfer portal that combined with NIL is like heaving a 40-gallon drum of high octane onto an out of control bonfire.

What to do about the NCAA may prove to be a bigger problem than all those previously mentioned issues combined. Sankey asked Monday “how much authority can be managed at the national level through the NCAA?” Indeed. At some point in the not too distant future college football will need to secede from the NCAA or else become an autonomous division that makes and abides by its own set of rules.

Whenever that day comes about, the SEC will be the best prepared league to handle any speed bumps and obstacles the future holds. Greg Sankey may not have all the answers for whatever is next just yet, but he is always at least one step ahead of everyone else. He is reminiscent of the immortal words of Butch Cassidy: “I’ve got insight and the rest of the world is wearing bifocals.”