Greg Sankey explains how he reacted to Big Ten news, batting down false reports

The 2022 summer was yet another busy one for SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. Last offseason, the conference inked Texas and Oklahoma to join in the coming years. Then this year, the Big Ten upset the college sports state of peace by plucking UCLA and USC from the Pac-12.

On the final day of SEC Media Days, Sankey joined the Paul Finebaum show to discuss his reaction to the Big Ten’s move and revealed some of the wild stories he had to dismiss from members of the SEC in the immediate aftermath.

“The way it came to me was not on social media or the way the public learned,” Sankey said. “I had somebody call me and say…heads up, this is about to happen. So I had the luxury of taking a step back and thinking through what I wanted to try to understand. The first part is to separate fact from fiction. Touch base with a couple of our key leaders. And in our circumstance, I think it affirms a decision we made last year.”

He continued, saying he didn’t want to make a big to-do about the situation in order to avoid added media attention.

“You wake up next day knowing there’s going to be all kinds of stories and you’re dealing with that. We decided on Friday not to call all of our groups together for a couple reasons. Not to engage in conjecture, which I think we would have been at that point. But also not to have a story that said the SEC presidents, chancellors and AD’s met, which then has its own ripple effect with people thinking there’s something else afoot.”

Finally, Greg Sankey addressed a few stories conjured up by questionable sources that he had to dismiss to calm down other SEC AD’s.

“The reality of the stories is they weren’t coming from our conference membership as I evaluated it. There are just darts being thrown at the dart board to see which dart will hit the target. So I had an AD call me at 8:30 at night who heard the next day we were announcing the addition of a member. I don’t know where that came from. Two days later, there was a report about schools negotiating for something that then related to us. I think the website was called SwimSwam, which I didn’t know. Again, I’m in the process saying…that’s not happening. We’re comfortable with who we are and where we are.”