Greg Sankey recalls initial expansion conversations with Texas, Oklahoma

The additions of Texas and Oklahoma by the SEC had been in the works for almost three years. Now, with both officially joining the conference this week, Greg Sankey has once again looked back at the process of how they got here with the Longhorns and Sooners.

Sankey broke down the steps of it all during a press conference from Norman earlier this week. That began with him going back almost a decade ago when the Southeastern Conference began further evaluating what realignment options were out there for them. That eventually included those of Texas and Oklahoma early in 2021.

“For me, October 2015? We presented analysis. I presented analysis to our presidents and chancellors about what might happen because I think we always have to be mindful of what might happen. Even today, I don’t have some plan. I’ve said, clearly, I’m not a recruiter but we want to pay attention to what’s happening around us. We’ve done that for this adjustment,” Sankey said. “So understanding, between October of 2015 and spring of 2021 when this conversation became real, I’ve had any number of points of outreach from different institutions.”

This possibility then became a reality in Austin and Norman. That’s when Sankey brought it to the attention of his other schools as the commissioner of their conference.

“It became real. We were coming out of COVID. You couldn’t meet as presidents and chancellors in person. I thought that was important. We had a lot of change in our presidential roles so I think it was like June 2nd, 2021. We had a meeting in Birmingham. I shared that we’d had outreach. I believed it was serious. It was united between the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas. I very candidly said to our presidents that we can stop if that’s your wish or we can go forward,” Sankey recalled. “We’ve talked for years about movement around us. The conversations obviously continued through June. It wasn’t daily or even weekly but they were very, very, very focused.”

However, it wasn’t a done deal by any means according to Sankey. For one, he himself considered decelerating the process with all that was going on in college athletics. For two, there were no guarantees regarding an offer or an official invite. Both of those led to some stressful days for those candidate schools as well as the conference.

“We had had a video conference the morning of the story breaking in The Houston Chronicle. There were so many moving parts – the Supreme Court decision, College Football Playoff expansion, two commissioners had just come into jobs recently in other conferences. I actually talked about slowing down the process,” Sankey said. “I then was going to have a call with our presidents that next Thursday to report that this is real and they’re poised to consider their future in the Big 12. The message from me was we can’t do anything until you decide your future in the Big 12, which attached itself to the grant of rights that expired on June 30th, 2025.”

“Part of the clarity and I think the discomfort for the presidents was I said that I can’t promise you the vote that will result in an invitation. We had talked about it with our presidents and chancellors. But, until you take that vote, you don’t know,” Sankey added. “There was a point of risk and, really, from the point of the league. From the story in The Houston Chronicle until the decisions that were made, we didn’t have any conversation. We knew who we were. I think I knew what Oklahoma and Texas desired.”

Still, in the end, the current members left no doubt as they all chose to allow Texas and Oklahoma in.

“When they informed the Big 12 of their direction, the next day they applied. From that Tuesday until the next Thursday? Eight or nine days, an incredibly intense time as you can imagine, resulting in a unanimous vote, which I give all 14 members credit for achieving, for the extension of invitations individually to the two institutions that were accepted on that Friday,” Sankey saaid.

Nearly three years passed before July 1st, 2024 marked the welcoming of both the Longhorns and Sooners as official members of the SEC. That allowed Sankey the chance to reflect on it and what all they did to get them in.

“We’re really proud of the way we handled ourselves and our decision-making and proud to be here as I said today,” Sankey closed.