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Greg Sankey reflects on sadness of Pac-12 collapse, conference realignment

On3 imageby:Dan Morrison08/09/23

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Greg Sankey
© Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

Last week, the Pac-12 conference seemingly suffered a death blow, with all but four schools leaving for the Big 12 and Big Ten. For figures like SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, this was a sad moment in college athletics, but it’s also not a unique moment.

During an appearance on The Paul Finebaum Show, Sankey reflected on the collapse of the Pac-12 amid recent conference realignment.

“I spoke to a Pac-12 alum today, who works in college athletics, and heard them hurt,” Greg Sankey said. “I called Pat Chun on Saturday. Pat’s the athletic director at Washington State.”

Washington State, Oregon State, Stanford, and California all remain in the Pac-12, for now. However, it seems like Stanford and Cal are currently in discussions with the ACC. Those rumors haven’t extended to Washington State or Oregon State.

“I said, ‘Look, I don’t have any solutions for you and I want to be clear.’ I said the same thing to Bernard Muir [Stanford AD] because I had Bernard’s cell phone. ‘I don’t have any solutions but I have great empathy’ because there’s a reality that things move on. I’ve been a part of that. I lived in Dallas when Arkansas transitioned from the Southwest Conference to the SEC,” Sankey said.

“I was also living in Dallas when the Southwest Conference and the Big 8 created a new structure, known as the Big 12. Mike Tranghese [former Big East commissioner] is a friend and you can still, you could fill a whole hour if you got Mike talking about conference expansion and conference movement.”

The current round of realignment began when Texas and Oklahoma made the move from the Big 12 to the SEC. That move was followed by the Big Ten adding USC and UCLA. Since then, the Big 12 and Pac-12 tried to find stability and the Big 12 was able to where the Pac-12 couldn’t.

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Greg Sankey explained that a lot of this came down to the Pac-12 failing to secure a media rights deal and the outcome is sad for the sport.

“I never think things are inevitable. I think certain things are predictable and the longer the media rights effort went on out west, the more that it was a low simmer bubble that had obviously boiled over last week,” Sankey said. “But for those of us who’ve been around it a long time and studied the history of college athletics, yeah, there’s a tinge of sadness and probably more than just a little tinge.”

Greg Sankey says the SEC is the envy of everyone in college football

Amid conference realignment, one thing has been clear. The SEC has stability and power in the world of college athletics. This has made it so Greg Sankey sees his conference as the envy of everyone in college football.

“I would submit we’re in an enormously healthy place. We’re not in the middle of the current movement efforts. As I was kind of linking in via Zoom, conversations about yet another conference and our autonomy grouping looking here and there for members. We’re gonna be constantly attentive,” Sankey said.

“I’ll go back to what seems like a year ago now, just a few weeks until media days in Nashville. I talked about our focus is on our growth to 16. When you look at the 16 universities that will soon all be affiliated officially with the Southeastern Conference when we add Oklahoma and Texas, I think that’s the envy of everyone in college football from a strength, from a success, from a support standpoint.”