SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey On The Record

Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey went on the record for an interview this week and shared thought on our current situation.

Greg Sankey has had a tough year so far. The commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, like others in similar positions across the nation, was forced to shut down sports on college campuses in March. It was not a call he wanted to make, but a necessary one. 

This week, Sankey took to the air in a video interview with 247 Sports, and another with Tony Barnhardt of Sports Illustrated's TMG Sports page where he spoke of the stoppage of the SEC basketball tournament in Nashville and the total cancellations of all other sports for the foreseeable future.   

On Thursday, March 12, Sankey announced that the remainder of the conference basketball tournament ended amid concerns about the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

On Friday, March 13, the NCAA Tournament was canceled along with all spring sports, including spring football practice and potential spring games. College athletics was shut down nationwide. 

"Normally, this would be our busiest time with championships and meetings, travel, and graduation," Sankey said.

Instead of sporting events and championships, now Sankey works from home, sitting through countless video conference calls between his staff, the NCAA, and commissioners of other conferences as they attempt to conceive a plan for the start of a college football season.  

"It is a fluid situation that can change daily," Sankey said. "We are living in an "IF" world in the morning. We can't answer all those questions with a yes or no or black and white."

As for contingencies for football being discussed by Power Five conferences, Sankey shared this via his video interview. 

"I'll boil it down to our discussions. If you just ran like the whole list, it's probably in the mid-late teens," said Sankey. "You're gonna hypothesize about everything, and people are kind enough to send letters with ideas, and (um) but we've kinda focused ourselves maybe two weeks after stopping the basketball tournament, I went to Mark Womack on our staff, executive SEC commissioner, he's been here 40 plus years, and I said, go pick a small group of people and focused on football and just begin the process of talking about what if."

Now those what if's are all seemingly in play for Sankey and his fellow conference leaders. 

As for SEC Media Days, which is the unofficial kickoff of football season in the SEC, the contingencies are in play there too. 

"We have a runway to make that decision, and that is an asset. But we also know that every day a little bit of that asset slips away," said Sankey.    

Much has been said of late, including NCAA president Mark Emmert's and Big-12 commissioner Bob Bowlsbey, who have both stated that students would have to be on campus before teams would be allowed to play on the fields. 

Sankey stopped short of that prediction. 

"The first step in this process is our universities returning to operations," said Sankey. "We need for our universities to be up and running. But we've been careful (talking publicly) about what that might look like."

Perhaps the biggest obstacle for commissioners and the NCAA to overcome is when to star as the quarantine situations remain different from state to state, meaning that some teams might not be able to begin their process at the same time as others. 

"There is room for different conferences to make different decisions," he said. "If there are a couple programs that aren't able, does that stop everyone? I don't think it does. But the ability for us to stay connected is important."

"We're all connected, certainly by schedules. And our priority is on playing (the season) as scheduled," Sankey said.

On Wednesday, we wrote of conference-only games and the possibility that teams such as Vanderbilt might need to escape non-conference games such as Mercer should the SEC decide to go that route.  

"My focus is being prepared to play the season as scheduled," he said.

As for the timetable on a possible decision, Sankey shared this. 

"I would think that the mid-July period would be critical," he said.

Still, nothing has been decided, and nothing is off the table, so we will continue to sit, watch and wait, hopeful of a change for the better on the virus front that will allow our world to shift back to normal.