Greg Sankey talks communication between commissioners, schools amid conference realignment

This summer featured another shift of tectonic plates in regards to college sports conferences when the longstanding and historically powerful Pac-12 was further pillaged by other conferences and is now left pretty much torn apart. Several Pac-12 clubs scampered off to the nearby Big 12 while two more schools joined USC and UCLA by fleeing eastward to join the Big Ten.

With schools buzzing around from one conference to the next while each league tries to figure out who they want to go after — the realignment world is/was a real war zone this summer. Amid the chaos, SEC Network host Paul Finebaum wants to know if SEC commissioner Greg Sankey had to put a metaphorical wall up around himself in the conference to avoid constant calls from other schools and conferences.

Sankey says no, that he’s not trying to avoid any communication and has been in support of conversations about the current state of things, even if he doesn’t plan to get aggressive adding more clubs to the SEC.

“There’s not a wall,” Sankey responded to Finebaum. “And I’ll offer this: whether it’s acknowledged, there’s a respect for our colleague conferences. There was plenty of criticism back in 2021 at the surprising nature of our Oklahoma and Texas announcement. Yet, from that point forward, we and those two universities and our entire conference has sought to be orderly in the process and respectful in our communication, and I think we’ve done that.”

Sankey is not closing the doors on any discussions nationally and wants to be apart of those conversations. Because otherwise, his own motivations can be misrepresented, as has been the case at various points this summer.

“I’ve opined publicly that I think the speculation and some of the pronouncements we’ve seen since that time — about growth or directional growth — is problematic,” he continued, going on to reveal what his conversations with other teams and conference leaders have actually been like.

“And even for me, with the security of the Southeastern Conference, whether it was Friday afternoon or through the day Saturday fielding phone calls, which were really more conversations like ‘what do you think is happening?’ There’s nobody calling me seeking or demanding entry (into the SEC). A lot of commentary publicly. You know, it just wasn’t one of those great feelings in college sports in my experience.”

Greg Sankey says a lot of those questions and talks have centered around the Pac-12 and what will happen next with them

“And again, I take responsibility, we’ve made moves. But there was something different last week about, really, the questions still around the existence of the Pac-12 conference given its long and storied history.”

The conference realignment shakeup is still ongoing and Sankey and these school presidents and other conference commissioners are really just trying to figure out where things stand before another monumental move is made.