SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey takes blame for Georgia, Oklahoma cancelling series

Georgia was set to play at Oklahoma in 2023 in the first game of a home-and-home series. Instead, that series was called off due to the Sooners joining the SEC.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey joined The Paul Finebaum Show on Friday and explained who was to blame for the series being cancelled.

“I’ll take responsibility for that if people want to Tweet at me angrily. But I’ll go back to my Southland Conference experience. When we added, you have game contracts in place you’re going to have to work your way through,” Greg Sankey said. “To the credit of both, there were attempts to see what might fit. Then when we moved things up – so one of the realities is we were scheduled for ’25. And you talk about fit. Then remember last summer for the first time, the Big 12 said, ‘Well, maybe we need to move earlier.’ So there were a set of complexities that were lingering. We needed to make some decisions as a conference. The schools needed to have the opportunity to go fill that schedule.”

Texas and Oklahoma were originally scheduled to join the SEC in 2025. However, they will now join the league next year. Because of that, Greg Sankey and the SEC decided to wait and have Georgia and Oklahoma face off when it would be a conference game.

Despite that decision, Sankey believes Georgia and Oklahoma will still have the opportunity to show if they are one of the best teams in the country and worthy of a College Football Playoff spot in 2023.

“I think both Oklahoma and Georgia still have the opportunity to show that they’re high quality football teams within their own schedules, but it was one of those outcomes of expansion that happened and had a direct and quick impact that that one series was canceled,” Sankey said.

While Georgia and Oklahoma won’t meet during the regular season this year, they will soon. Sankey is thrilled that meetings like Georgia vs. Oklahoma and Georgia vs. Texas will take place regularly beginning in 2024.

“Now the cool news is, you’re going to see that game, we’ll call it the ‘Border Regions Bowl’ if you know the history of litigation and the lawsuits in the ‘80s. That game we’ll see every other year and twice every four years moving forward. I think that’s where our excitement is,” Sankey said.

“We had to make a decision. Again, big picture decision, we made the right decision for the Southeastern Conference and our soon-to-be 16 universities. Did it create some short-term disruption and people can make a point of criticism? Sure. But you know what, that’s reality.”