Greg Sankey discusses having one entity ruling the current landscape in college football

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, one of the most powerful people in the college sports world, is skeptical of a single entity gaining the power to govern over college football by itself. He recently discussed the possibility with Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt.

As Sankey described it, having such an entity would involve the conferences and schools ceding agency in the decision-making process. He doubts he and other power brokers would be lining up to hand over their authority.

“To have this full convening with authority vested someplace else, then the entities — be they campuses or conferences, and there’s a distinction there — would have to say, ‘You know what, I’m going to contribute fully my decision making authority to fill-in-the-blank and whatever is decided by whomever in leadership is what we will do.’ We do that in certain ways within college sports,” Sankey said, “we don’t do that universally. So we have a set of NCAA rules. Some of those are being changed or challenged. We have states that have now created mandates on how we run college sports, they can’t just be overrun right now by an association. So I don’t jump to that, because I think it ignores some of the elements that would need to be there.”

A newly formed football governing body — “Football Inc.” as Sankey dubbed it in his conversation with Klatt — would be in the same position as the NCAA in regard to complying with state law. But there would be benefits to some newly-formed entity, mostly a clearer, more concise mission to govern college football and not also a spate of other sports.

Sankey argued that the current power structure has what it takes to navigate the NCAA and college football through its current tumultuous times.

And mostly, Sankey isn’t sold that whatever offshoot to govern football won’t be afflicted by the same issues as the NCAA and college football leaders move to protect amateurism.

“On the other hand, when I use the words like ‘collaboration’ and ‘communication’ it conveys that we have to work across those boundaries to achieve goals. And I can elaborate beyond in any follow up conversation. But when I’m asked about should there be Football Inc., if you will, that says ‘Here’s how we’re going to do this’ — that’s a very different departure, with a lot of what ifs between the starting line and the finish line of that consideration,” Sankey said.