Greg Sankey ‘committed’ to SEC Championship amid 24-team CFP expansion debate

MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Amid a flurry of questions about a possible expansion of the College Football Playoff, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Monday night that the conference still sees value in its championship game.

It has almost become accepted that playoff expansion means the death of the conference championship game. There are already scheduling challenges even with a 12-team playoff, and the conventional wisdom is that a move to 16 or 24 teams will cause those title games to become extinct.

“We have contracts,” Sankey said of the SEC Championship, “so pretty committed.” When asked what’s next for his philosophical commitment to the game, he replied: “I’m pretty committed.” The SEC and Mercedes-Benz Stadium have a contract to play the game through 2031.

Fractured SEC seeks consensus on CFP expansion as Big Ten draws clear line on 24-team model

Brandon Marcello

Sankey’s comments come amid a busy spring, in which several high-profile SEC figures have called for the conference to move away from the championship game. Alabama AD Greg Byrne told USA Today of the SEC championship, “I think the ship has sailed. It’s run its course.” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said in April that something would have to be won if the SEC championship was lost.

“Where we are right now with 12 teams, I don’t necessarily agree that we should stop playing,” Smart told On3. “But if it gets to 16 or 24 and we have to bring the end of the season forward and we have to finish everything by the second week of January, then I would say it probably has to go.”

The SEC invented the conference championship game under former commissioner Roy Kramer in 1992. Famously, Alabama beat Florida that year and won the national championship. Played annually in Atlanta, beyond the nostalgia and historical appeal, it constitutes an important source of revenue for the conference. Last year, the Alabama-Georgia SEC championship game drew 16.86 million viewers on ABC.

The financial appeal of conference championship games was part of Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti’s recent proposal to expand to 24 teams. Once a proponent of a 16-team automatic qualification format, Petitti believes financial data no longer makes sense for this. The Big Ten commissioner said the Power Four would collectively lose $200 million in annual revenue if they cut the conference championship games. A move to 16 teams and the additional revenue that comes with it wouldn’t make up for that, he said last week at the Big Ten spring meetings.

“I just don’t think it works economically,” Petitti said. “I don’t think it works in terms of planning as well. I don’t think it creates enough new inventory. And then the last piece, I don’t think it gets enough access.”