SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is glad to see the 12-team College Football Playoff format he helped devise finally get approved, but he’s not confident it’ll be implemented earlier than 2026.
Speaking with reporters prior to Saturday’s Chick-fil-A Kickoff game between Oregon and Georgia, Sankey expressed disappointment that the last nine months that could have been used to work out many of the finer details of CFP expansion were instead wasted by the proposal being voted down by the Pac-12, ACC and Big Ten in January. But those conferences, which were briefly tied together in “The Alliance,” changed their positions over some of the issues they raised.
“I was never really clear on the reasons to vote no,” Sankey said. “I understand the Rose Bowl from the Pac-12′s standpoint; I think all four of us (myself, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick) knew what would eventually need to be discussed and decided but we said from the beginning, in the original presentation, we’re going to the market. We are going to the market and every media entity will have an opportunity. So the notion hat somebody leveraged this is completely incorrect.
