SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey: I’ll ‘pay attention’ to future conference expansion, ‘but I’m not recruiting’

Greg Sankey isn’t exactly open for business, as it pertains to the SEC’s view on conference expansion, but that doesn’t mean the commissioner is closing all avenues at the moment.

While the SEC isn’t making a play for any additions currently, namely ACC teams like Clemson and Florida State, that doesn’t mean the conference wouldn’t be open to some changes in the future, as Sankey explained during an appearance on SEC Network on Wednesday.

“It varies, you know, it really does vary,” Sankey said, regarding the process of expanding a conference, speaking from experience. “So, you look when we went from 12 to 14, those were like, quick phone calls, with kind of — following a year of tumult, when the PAC 10, remember, was going to go to 16 in the summer of ’10. A&M, Texas, there had been some outreach there. Kind of put all the notebooks on the shelf, and then it popped up quickly. And that expansion, with Texas A&M, was from, really mid, late July to early September, and there was kind of stops and starts in there, and then they played the next year. So, you’re asking about planning, Missouri was a November entry and they play the next year. Here, what, three years? This is like, the longest window, ‘Hey, they’re coming,’ to they’re actually entering.

“My responsibility is to pay attention, but I also worded that statement directly to say, ‘This is really our focus.’ Then, in the big room, and I’ve had it ever since, and in conversations like this, ‘Hey, what do you think about expansion? What’s going to happen with expansion?’ Our focus, literally, is on 16. Now, you have to pay attention, and what we’ve tried to do is to make sure our relationships are right, and you can see in at least one other conference, there’s trouble in those relationships. But you know, people make commitments. They sign contracts. They vote on the direction of the league, and that’s part of that, that shared responsibility. So, I pay attention, but I’m not recruiting. You have to think about the future, but you also have to be incredibly careful in this litigious culture.”

Alas, Sankey is being extremely careful with what he says, as he doesn’t want to drive a wedge between the SEC and the other conferences in college football, but it’s evident his conference is a destination where many schools would love to be.

Is there a future for some of the teams in the ACC with the SEC, or maybe some surprising programs looking for a new home? That remains to be seen, but Greg Sankey is content either way. He’s not going to go out and beg anyone though.