Greg Sankey Says His Piece In Regards To College Football Playoff Expansion

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey sat around like everyone else and listened to the debate regarding the College Football Playoff’s expansion and its effect on the sport.

Sankey heard the criticism and the praise surrounding the playoff’s expansion to 12 teams, but when it was all said and done he was happy with the result. 

“I felt the first year of the 12-year College Football Playoff was a success,” Sankey said Monday at SEC Media Days. “But, what happened through the 12-team College Football Playoff is we brought teams into the conversation at a time when they would have been talking about their bowl game.”

“We brought teams into the National Championship conversation so the young people on those teams had that National Championship competition access point.”

Sankey still references Alabama’s exclusion from the field last season and appears to have a playoff format in mind that would accomodate teams with a rèsumè like the Crimson Tide’s. 

It appears as if there’s still plenty of room to go, but Sankey could be an active advocate of expanding the playoff. 

“I think the recent modifications by the College Football Playoff to adjust the seeding to be consistent with the selection committee's rankings is entirely appropriate,” Sankey said, “Given the adjustments to conference membership that have happened nationally since the 12-team concept was first introduced in June of 2021.”

While the SEC Commissioner is open to further expansion, he wants to pump the brakes on pushing for a specific number of teams in the field. It doesn’t mean that he won’t ultimately end up doing it, though.

Sankey notes that he was an advocate to expand the playoff to eight teams during the 2019 dialogue and was an advocate to ultimatley get to 12 teams, but when a question insinuated that he had spoken out in favor of 16 teams being in the field, he pushed back.

“Well, you're binding me to a 16-team playoff, but I'm going to walk you back,” Sankey said. “There was some misunderstanding communicated about a memorandum of understanding.”

Perhaps the dialogue suggesting that a specific number of teams undermines Sankey’s point of making a general state of the union surrounding the playoff, but it had to be asked. It’s the general next assumption based off of his attitude towards expansion. 

Leave it to Sankey to paint the picture in broad strokes and there’s your likely answer. The dialogue isn’t over, but in Sankey’s mind it at least has a better baseline than it did.

“That doesn't mean everything was perfect, and there are certainly opportunities to improve,” he said on the podium at Monday morning’s state of the union press conference.“We have a 12-team playoff, five conference champions. That can stay if we can't agree."