SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is nothing if not performative, and his appearance at the outset of the conference’s 2024 media days was one for the books.
Among other things, Sankey declared that the SEC is the conference that still really makes sense. You know: Southeastern.
“We know who we are in the Southeastern Conference,” the commissioner intoned. “We’re the one conference at this level where the name still means something: the Southeastern part of the United States.”
Sankey said this while standing at the podium in Dallas, site of the media event, which is most decidedly not in the Southeastern part of the United States. The reason the SEC happened to be in Dallas this week was to tout the noteworthy 2024 additions to the Southeastern Conference of Texas and Oklahoma, two schools which, at the risk of repeating myself, ain’t there, chief.
The SEC’s most recent previous additions, Missouri and Texas A&M back in 2012, also didn’t fit the geographical definition. But Sankey wasn’t really saying that the whole world is going Southeast; he was just popping a couple barbs in the general direction of the Big Ten and Big 12, rival conferences that have essentially grabbed teams from all over and become more national than regional.
If that’s what Sankey wants to hang his hat on, so be it. The SEC doesn’t need to explain much, these days. It has dominated the college football landscape long enough that, if its commissioner wants to pretend Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri aren’t actually in the middle of the map, it is a fairly harmless delusion.
But when Sankey further says the SEC isn’t looking to expand beyond 16 teams?
Now we’re getting into new worlds.
Again, that’s not precisely how Sankey put it. He was asked roughly seven thousand times about the SEC continuing to grow its ranks, especially with Florida State and Clemson suing the ACC’s grant of rights, a prelude to the schools leaving that conference.
Florida State and Clemson could actually be said to be part of the Southeastern United States. So how about it, commish?
“We’re focused on our 16,” Sankey replied. “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.”
Sankey added, “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…I don’t spend an enormous amount of my time thinking about it. I certainly don’t spend any time engaged in that recruiting activity because we’re focused on our 16.”
That’s an awesome answer, although it didn’t prevent anyone at Media Days from asking endless follow-ups about, well, expansion. And the truth is that Sankey can’t answer those questions, because he’s not the one calling the shots.
ESPN. ABC. Those are the letters of the alphabet you ought to be paying attention to, if you’re wondering about the future of the SEC.
With the conference ditching longtime partner CBS and jumping to the Disney-owned ESPN/ABC this year, Sankey now presides over an SEC that is fully invested in broadcast revenue, period. Whether it expands again is going to rely heavily on whether its broadcast partners think that an expanded SEC is a more profitable SEC. Period.
That’s just business, and Sankey knows all about it. The Disney deal works out to about $3 billion over the next decade, and the SEC already had a working relationship with ESPN that runs 10 years beyond that. The two are tied tight.
And so: If at some point the folks at Disney start asking what they’re getting for their money, which ought to commence, oh, any minute now, there will likely come a time at which some folks in the meeting room wonder why there’s something magical about the number 16.
Sixteen teams is good. Sixteen is cool. You know what might make even more money? Something like 20 teams, or 24.
The SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 have already moved well beyond whatever anyone might have thought to be their “original” scope. I mean, things change. I’m old enough to remember when the Pac-12 was a conference, before it crumbled under the weight of an inferior TV contract and some genuinely hideous leadership.
Sankey has presided over a remarkably healthy and profitable time for the SEC, and none of his university presidents wants that gravy train to run dry. Neither do the folks at Disney, the ones paying the freight.
The commissioner wasn’t wrong – at all – when he said that the focus should be on the 16 teams the SEC has. But the thing is, it’ll only stay at 16 for as long as his broadcast partners want it that way. That’s the deal the conference struck when it said yes to the Mouse.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
