Sankey said in hindsight, FBS conferences all should have been more connected this seasonGETTY IMAGES
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey discussed playing football amid a pandemic and said the conference "did a lot right," according to a Q&A with Ross Dellenger of SI.com. Below are experts from the Q&A, some of which have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Has playing sports during the pandemic made you look differently toward the future?
Sankey: I've had the panic on the inside while I watched others panic on the outside, and hopefully I presented a sense of calm. You realize you're going to have to guide decisions, make decisions and you're going to have to live with the outcomes. ... I felt responsibility to provide (the athletes) an opportunity. ... I felt a responsibility to provide the opportunity, because when time passes, it doesn't come back around. Had we just walked away, like others did, people would have lost an opportunity.
Q: You made a ton of critical decisions this year. Do you have any regrets?
Sankey: There were unpredictable circumstances that were dynamic. I don't sit here with regrets. ... I'm disappointed that not all FBS stuck together. I regret that. But I'm not the one who walked away, we're not the ones who walked away. We all should have been more connected. The SEC didn't walk away.
Q: That leads into the discussion of the NCAA needing someone to keep everyone together, right? What has this year shown in regards to that?
Sankey: If there were cracks in the foundation, the COVID-19 environment didn't create those cracks but it revealed those cracks. ... You can evaluate that in college athletics -- the different directions, the difficult decision-making. ... If we aren't bringing people together ... then we need to take a step back, because we're not going to solve the problems by all running in our own directions (SI.com, 1/11).
