Greg Sankey reacts to SEC earning multiple College Football Playoff bids: 'I’d love to have eight teams'

The SEC is poised to get at least three teams in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff and likely four, unless a few results break the wrong way. It’s a result that league commissioner Greg Sankey isn’t going to apologize for.

As far as he’s concerned, the ideal outcome is his league getting the maximum number of teams possible in the field, with one auto-bid for the conference champion and seven at-large bids going to teams in his league. Sankey explained this position on a call with reporters ahead of the SEC Championship Game this Saturday, acknowledging his bias is for his league to succeed, much like it is in league offices around the country.

“You’re asking me to project out for years and I’m wearing an SEC pin, you may have noticed. People have asked me: What is my objective? I’d love to have eight teams,” Sankey said. “So the conference champion and then there’s seven at-larges. People would opine about whether that’s good or not. I think that’s the reality of college football. This conference, the Southeastern Conference is unique in our rigor and our depth and I think that has to be understood and recognized.”

Heading into conference championship weekend, the current outlook for the CFP field is that the Big Ten will get four teams and the SEC is poised to get as many unless Clemson upsets SMU in the ACC Championship Game, opening the door for the Mustangs to elbow out Alabama for the final at-large spot as Clemson jumps in and essentially steals a bid. Alabama could still get in as an at-large over SMU but would be at the behest of the selection committee.

And as his answer indicated, Sankey isn’t overwrought with concern about SEC-Big Ten hegemony in the College Football Playoff hurting the sport.

As he kept going and promoting his league, Sankey returned to some tried and true talking points about SEC football. He also alluded to the idea that the SEC eating up a large portion of bids in a given postseason tournament isn’t out of the ordinary.

“The places in which we play. The level of competition. You may be the eight-placed team and if you look at our non-conference record against our Power 4 colleagues, we establish ourself uniquely as a successful and a competitive conference. I view that as a reality and I would expect ourselves to continue to achieve at that level, maybe even beyond. And by the way, I don’t view that as inconsistent with other sports, where in softball every one of our 13 teams plays in the NCAA tournament in most of the recent years. We’ve had that in women’s golf. I look at the projections now that have 12 SEC teams in the NCAA tournament field. Now those numbers are 64 or 68, but I want us to achieve at the high level and I want us to be proud of that in an unapologetic manner.”

So while eight SEC teams are surely not going to get in this year, they’ll always have a booster for their cause in Sankey.