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Preconceived ideas that the
strategic partnership between the Big Ten and SEC is a precursor to a runaway league may be overstated -- at least in SEC Commissioner
Greg Sankey’s mind.
“Stop seeing shadows in the room that aren’t there,” Sankey said Friday during a visit to Columbia, S.C., when asked his message to those who suggested this notion. “We have some very big issues to be dealt with and we identified those. Legal issues, legislative issues, that’s the focus.”
Announced Feb. 2, the "advisory group" -- a classification Sankey said was very specific and thought out -- created ample prognostications about the future of college football as it marked one of the first public recognitions between the enterprise’s two most powerful leagues that they should operate and think about things in unison.
“There's definitely common ground there,” incoming Ohio State AD Ross Bjork said earlier this month. “And whether that's TV ratings, whether that's athletic department budget sizes, whether that's stadium sizes across the board of the biggest brands, that common ground is there [between the Big Ten and SEC]. I think that's where both commissioners finally said, ‘Let's take some action and let's look at some different models and figure out the future.’”
That the Big Ten and SEC are aligning with one another notably comes amid one of the more chaotic times in the College Football Playoff’s limited history.
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The CFP is set to expand to 12 teams beginning this season with a "5+7" qualifying format in which the five highest-ranked league champions will receive automatic bids into the field along with seven at-large teams. That belabored format change, which Sankey said Friday “shouldn’t have taken that long,” however, hasn’t quelled discussion about expanding the field even further — and with the SEC and Big Ten in mind.
Wednesday’s meetings between the CFP’s varying boards reportedly included discussion around a 14-team model that would give the Big Ten and SEC anywhere from 3-4 automatic qualifiers annually and would distribute larger portions of the CFP’s revenue to those leagues specifically."
An unequal revenue distribution would mark a major departure for the CFP. The 2023-24 campaign, for example, followed this formula:
- Each conference received $300,000 for member institutions when the school’s football team met the NCAA’s APR for participation in a postseason football game. Each independent institution also received $300,000 under the same standards.
- A conference received $6M for each team selected for a CFP semifinal and another $4M for each team that played in a non-playoff bowl under the arrangement.
- Each conference whose team participated in a Playoff Semifinal, Cotton, Fiesta or Peach bowls, or the national title game received $2.85M to cover expenses for each game.
“I think there has to be change,” Sankey said. “The conversation here [in Columbia], nobody was encouraging the status quo. I've yet to hear that. So every part of what we discussed is going to involve some level of change.”
“The reality is we have deadlines and that's going to force the conversation,” he continued. “That's just reality. We didn't have [conversations] when we had a lot of time. Now time is short, so we have to have them. The introduction of ideas has always been part of the conversation -- at least since I’ve been involved [with the CFP]. So the fact that there may be new ideas, that's kind of a reality of the endeavor.”
The format discussions come as the CFP is locked into a negotiation with ESPN to extend their media rights deal, which is set to expire after the 2025 season. The Athletic reported last week reps from the CFP and ESPN were nearing terms on a six-year, $7.8B extension, giving the network the playoff through the 2031-32 season.
That said, those familiar with the discussions have suggested the deal has not been finalized and faces myriad hurdles. Yahoo Sports also revealed last week MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher described reports of the CFP agreeing to or having concluded an extension of the media rights deal with ESPN as "incorrect" in a memo sent to his conference.
Sankey deferred when asked what needed to take place to finalize such a deal.
“I'm going to save that for the room,” he said. “Others will comment and leak and share, but I share my comments in the room. I think that’s respectful. I think I owe that duty.
