Greg Sankey says SEC ‘restores’ rivalries, others don’t

One could make the case that conference realignment isn’t always what’s best for college sports. There are plenty of pros but, once you get into the nitty-gritty of it all, there is also a fair share of cons. Still, as Greg Sankey has pointed out, the SEC has done the best it can to make a positive experience out of the conference’s latest additions.

Sankey spoke about what Texas and Oklahoma’s arrivals mean for the SEC with Greg McElroy on ‘Always College Football’. He said that, within their decisions, they wanted to do their best to preserve the best parts of college athletics, which in this conversation meant rivalries, while also doing what was best for their league.

“(We wanted to) examine the history of college sports and think forward about how that history informs you. You can see moments when membership transition happened around TV negotiations. And I said in 2015 that, eventually in my view, the Big 12 membership would change. And that wasn’t going to be the first time it changed,” Sankey said. “Nebraska left, Colorado left, Texas A&M and Missouri left. And those were like peer institutions. So it was just an observation about thinking.”

“When you had two that were clearly going someplace? In that circumstance, we think this was the right place for them to affiliate,” Sankey continued. “And I’ll just add one last clause which is an interesting reality of our expansion is we restore rivalries. The other expansions haven’t done that. So, obviously, Texas A&M and Texas are kind of leading there. You retain Oklahoma and Texas. Arkansas and Texas goes back decades. Oklahoma and Missouri were a quarter of the Big-Eight back in the day and will now be a part of the Southeastern Conference. And then there’s geographical alignments that’ll provide rivalries sooner rather than later in my view.”

From there, he continued to applaud the work of the SEC with the inclusion of the Longhorns and Sooners. He added that both are a fantastic fit both from a geographical standpoint as well as a philosophical one.

“When we expanded, we added 95 miles, basically, to our travel, our longest trip. And our longest trip is shorter than the shortest trip that the LA schools will have in the Big Ten,” said Sankey. “We are still educational entities, we are still moving people from class and to class. And final exams matter. As does scheduling high-level competition.”

“Right now, we have 14 leading universities. (Now) we’ll have 16,” Sankey said. “We have 14 programs competing for national championships with every ounce of energy they can muster. (And) we’ll add two more that approach it the same way. So that really is what has informed our decision-making.

The SEC still has a year before things really get rolling for them with Texas and Oklahoma. However, from what Sankey said, the conference’s respective fanbases can continue to expect the best when it comes to education, travel, competition, and, now, rivalries.