Greg Sankey says he was always comfortable with sticking at four-team College Football Playoff

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has witnessed a lot of playoff and postseason success from his conference’s college football programs. Since joining the conference in 2002, five different programs have won a national title.

Since Sankey took over as commissioner, six of the eight national champions have been from the SEC.

Sankey knows his conferences teams will make whatever postseason format is in place, which he told Joel Klatt on The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations was his reason for not being on the expand-the-playoff bandwagon.

“The number of teams that have captured national championships out of this league is remarkable,” Sankey said during the hour-long interview. “That’s unique. That is part of what sets us apart. We didn’t have to expand. And I meant that. Even after we announced the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, I’m still comfortable staying at four. I don’t think we’re gonna have fewer teams in the four than we’ve had. But the feeling was that we weren’t building upon the existing health of college football to the future health of college football. Particularly because you really have an entire segment of the country not involved in national championship and that’s the West Coast.”

In December of last season, the College Football Playoff Board of Managers announced the postseason will expanded to a 12-team tournament for the 2024 season.

The first round of games will be held on college campuses before the quarterfinals, which will be held during New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be bowl games. The 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship Game will be held Jan. 20, 2025.

The initial discussions about possible expansion started in December 2018, Sankey explained.

“We had some teams left out that people were adamant should have been in,” Sankey said. “The cries for expansion increased from within the system. And by within the system, I mean within the five conference — really from former colleagues. We went to a meeting in Santa Clara. The Presidents said it’s too early to be predicting anything. We’re going to create a review and the presidents will decide. You fast forward. At the end of it, the presidents were the ones who decided. So that was fulfillment. Then in between we tried to think about, with a small sub committee rather than a group of the whole, and all of that was devulged. There were no secrets about who was on. You had a reluctant participant — me — who said four’s fine.”