SEC commissioner Greg Sankey discusses the elimination of divisions in future conference scheduling

Commissioner Sankey discussed why and how the SEC came to the decision to do away with the east and west divisions.

Author:
Lance Dawe
Publish date:
Jul 17, 2023 3:26 PM EDT

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey took the podium on day one of SEC Media Days.

Among other topics, Sankey discussed the future of the SEC's schedule with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the league in 2024 changing the conference schedule format.

The SEC has already released the 2024 conference slate but is expected to change the schedule again in 2025.

Commissioner Sankey was asked about the internal discussion around the discussion to eliminate divisions and how they came to the conclusion.

"That discussion in football goes back to 2018, 2019, so the discussion of is our current divisional approach in football the most competitively equitable," Sankey said. "So the words "fair and balanced" came up a lot. You had to define what do you mean by fair and what do you mean by balanced in the schedule. We were here in March of '20. You'll remember that activity with a report to our presidents and chancellors, as a 14-team league on here's the possibilities of how we might adjust. We stopped everything, including that discussion, in 2020. Fast forward a year, the expansion was announced. When we began discussing a 16-team football schedule in August of '21, the first set of conversations were, again, taking the words "fair" and the word "balance" and defining them. Balance was rotating teams through with greater frequency, so I think plenty of people have written about a team may not see a team certainly for six years or may not go someplace for 12 years if they're in another division. So that was balanced."

SEC Media Days is being hosted this year for the first time in Nashville, Tennessee.

Auburn Daily is here covering Media Days all week long. You can catch updates, quotes, predictions and more here on auburndaily.com.