Greg Sankey-SECMD22 — SEC commissioner Greg Sankey with the opening statement Monday morning to get SEC Media Days 2022 off and rolling in Atlanta punting on most big questions. (Dale Zanine / USA TODAY Sports)

Latest Schedule Grief Shows Why SEC Needs Leader, Not Politician

Greg Sankey letting league delay decision on football conference games just proof

Author:
Andy Hodges
Publish date:
Jun 10, 2023 5:17 PM EDT

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — At a time when the Southeastern Conference could have taken a leadership role, commissioner Greg Sankey just let them kick the whole thing down the road for a year ... and probably create more problems. Too many teams, including Arkansas, are being short-sighted thinking eight games and a bowl game is better than the extra benefit of a ninth league game.

The highly-anticipated 2024 football schedule will be released Wednesday night on the SEC Network. Yes, they turned a decision into a primetime broadcast, which is perfectly fine, but just shows the amount of interest in the deal. With Texas and Oklahoma coming into the league, they can't even vote until next July on what their own schedule is going to be.

It also gives Sankey a year to play the political game and get a new media rights deal done for 2025 when it's expected there's going to be money from places we don't even know about right now using about the only thing that gets the member schools to add a ninth league game to the schedule every year. That's exactly where it should be. The Longhorns and Sooners are on the record they want it at nine, but they don't have a vote yet and may not next year if it's decided at the spring fling on the beach in Destin. July 1 is officially when they get a vote.

Exactly why the league doesn't follow the NFL model and have little four-team pods that rotate on a pattern similar to the biggest sports audience out there is a little difficult to understand. We haven't resolved the whole thing of making people happy with a meaningless bowl game that generally ends up costing the school money instead of making their product better.

Go ahead and stop all these practice restrictions and give everybody a chance to have those December practices. Exactly how they shoehorn that in with semester finals and signing day isn't my problem, but if the coaches want it, feel free to do it. That's the reason coaches like it. It gives them a chance to look at some guys they really haven't gotten a feel for how they've developed with limited reps during a season.

This whole thing could have been solved with some leadership from the top. Instead, playing politics was the path chosen by Sankey, who's really not a bad guy. When the two new teams can officially cast votes for a ninth game then it's going to really get interesting.

The popular theory among a lot of the talking heads and other folks is the league is dodging better competition by playing the tougher league games. Most of the coaches confident don't care, just give them the schedule. Others have flip-flopped on the whole issue for whatever reasons. Sankey may be getting a little irked at the criticism.

"Nobody's shying away from anything, we just didn't add another game in a time of transition," Sankey said. "If you’re that impatient, I’m glad you’re not leading a conference." This is where a lack of transparency creates all sorts of issues. What's the holdup? Obviously that's where things are going.

Maybe if the media rights thing was juiced up a little there would be some movement. At the least if that's the hangup, go with that. We have enough evidence those contracts are simply the starting point for negotiations for one party to break it for a better deal.

Sankey's problem is not particularly easy. Not everybody is going to love what ultimately changes the whole thing. Some of us are old enough to remember when the SEC played a six-game conference schedule every year. Alabama and Georgia had stretches when they didn't play each other for seven years at a time.

The league has too many games everybody wants to a call a historical rivalry that should never end. They are going to continue having these problems as long as nearly 25% of the teams in the league think Alabama is a big rival for them. Every coach has a different team he wants to beat every year, usually traced back to something with that school. Traditions are usually dragged out for reasons nobody really knows why other than they've always been told it is.

As usual, this whole thing is rooted in more money, which is fine. The result is having an entire year of scheduling delayed a year while trying to make everybody "kinda" happy but nothing resolved. We'll know more Wednesday.