Greg Sankey on the state of College Football Playoff expansion

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey fielded questions on a variety of topics during his media availability at SEC media days. Among the topics that Sankey touched on was College Football Playoff expansion.

Prior to the announcement that Texas and Oklahoma would be moving to the SEC, the College Football Playoff Working Group proposed expanding the playoff to twelve teams. In that model, the top six conference champions and six at-large teams would make the playoff. However, in many ways, expansion was stunted by conference realignment, as everyone waited to see the new structure of college football.

Greg Sankey explained the initial logic of a 12-team playoff.

“I walked into one of the first meetings when we were looking at the format and said if we want to expand eight teams for the playoff with no automatic bids, I’ll have that conversation,” Greg Sankey said.

“But moving to an eight-team playoff and granting what were going to be six automatic bids and reducing at-large access is unwise.”

Greg Sankey made the point that in 2014, the eighth best team wouldn’t have made the playoff but the 20th best would have. He feels that would hurt the game’s credibility. Sankey also clearly feels differently about playoff expansion now. He still believes in it, but he doesn’t have the same belief that as many conferences deserve bids every season.

“If we’re gonna go back to square one, then we’re gonna take a step back from the model that was introduced and rethink the approach. Number of teams. Whether there should be any guarantee for conference champions at all. Just earn your way in. There’s something that’s healthy competitively about that.”

Greg Sankey did also mention that there was a meeting about College Football Playoff expansion in June. He said he walked in with some concerns, but he left feeling positive about the path forward.