Sankey plays favorite game at SEC Media Days

ATLANTA — Based on the extreme television numbers SEC commissioner Greg Sankey espoused Monday morning, pretty much every sport has unprecedented popularity within the league. However, the conference's favorite sport may once again prove to be kick the can.

For another of what has been several years now, the SEC commissioner has addressed another meeting where the conference's stance is it will watch to see how things continue to play out and shape up around college football and how it ultimately affects access to a championship before deciding on a definitive eight or nine game SEC schedule approach.

At the moment, the decision appears to be that it's best to stick with eight conference games with the requirement of another Power Four opponent on the schedule somewhere. A big part of why Sankey is confident that's best for the SEC at the moment is the lack of people looking at overall schedule, except perhaps the one Missouri has managed, and having a legitimate claim that it's not loaded with quality opponents.

"I don't believe there's anyone looking to swap their conference schedule and its opponents with the opponents played by Southeastern Conference teams and our conference schedule, be it eight or nine," Sankey said. "I handed out a bunch of stats and created a stir in dust, and that showed there's a rigor here that is unique in the SEC. We're not lacking for quality competition among our 16 football teams, but we're going to continue to evaluate whether increasing the number of conference football games is appropriate for us. And as I've said repeatedly, understanding how the CFP will evaluate strength of schedule and even strength of record is critically important in our decision making."

While 2025 is obviously set, if that is something that needs to be addressed as far as a permanent decision in regard to the following season, Sankey is confident the ball will get rolling quickly after the announcement as far as official moves.

"We have to make decisions about the 26 season and adjust if, if we're going to go to nine games and there have to be games removed or rescheduled, and if we stay there, probably a little bit easier on that part of the logistics," Sankey said. "Once we make a decision in the conference office, we're pretty ready to go. If you go back to when we made our last decision, we were in Destin I think two weeks later, had opponents out, and shortly thereafter, we were prepared with dates and sites sort of thing."

For now however, Sankey is content with the SEC's approach. He finds satisfaction in the sheer number of quality teams appearing on each team's schedule that would be considered big school opponents.

"We had several [SEC teams] that played 10 of their 12 games against power opponents," Sankey said. "Some conferences have that, some don't. The same will be true [again]. This year we have Washington State. We're obviously transitioning in the Pac 12 that's included in that group, and we again have several of our football teams that have 10 of those power games embedded within their schedule."

So, yet again, college football fans get to sit back and enjoy another full season of kick the can. The SEC will ride the status quo into perpetuity it may seem.

However, that's a question for another SEC Media Day. Definitely not this one it would appear.

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