Greg Sankey Talks SEC Expansion, Potential Changes to Future Schedules

The future of the Southeastern Conference is one of the more fascinating storylines to follow in college athletics and commissioner Greg Sankey is in the center of all of it.

This summer, the conference shocked the nation by officially adding the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas beginning in 2025.

This news immediately started to have fans and media members discuss how the conference should separate the teams come football season.

Some fans prefer keeping it as two eight-team divisions while others will prefer four four-team divisions.

On Thursday morning, Sankey appeared on the syndicated morning talk show “Rick and Bubba” to discuss the addition of what the two schools could mean for the conference and his opinion on “divisions.”

Sankey says OU and UT initiated the call

Recently, a lot of talk has gone underway on how the process for adding Oklahoma and Texas went down.

The Big 12 commissioner came out and made a statement last month accusing ESPN of having a hand in the schools’ decision to join the SEC.

A portion of the statement read, “The Big 12 Conference demands that ESPN immediately cease and desist all actions that may harm the conference and its members and that it not communicate with the Big 12 Conference’s existing members or any NCAA conference regarding the Big 12 conference’s members, possible conference realignment or potential financial incentive or outcomes related to possible conference realignment.”

On the radio show, Greg Sankey talked about how the process went along and how he, as host Rick Burgess dubbed, kept the “best secret ever.”

“It’s fascinating to me to think about how narratives develop,” said Sankey. “When I was going through the search process (to be named commissioner), I had just a little line that said, ‘We want to make ourselves the best, most successful as we possibly can, do things with excellence so people really come to us.'”

The process from there really did start with something as basic as a phone call.

“That produced a phone call saying ‘Would you be interested if we ever sought membership,'” added Sankey. “What people seem to miss is that (Oklahoma and Texas) had to make decisions about their futures and we had to make decisions.”

He went on to add that the schools in the conference unanimously approved adding UT and OU because of the all-around benefit that was seen.

Sankey mentions UK fans about why schedule should change

Continuing the interview with the talk show, Greg Sankey stopped short of guaranteeing changes to the conference format.

“I want us to take a step back and really think about how we can move our teams through our campuses more frequently,” he said.

“Right now, if you’re on the east side, your non-permanent west opponent, you’ll see at home once in 12 years. We shouldn’t be doing that. We should rotate with the names of universities, the prominence of our football programs, we want those to show up on our campuses and go to other campuses more frequently.”

The commissioner credits the Kentucky fanbase for showing why having schools rotate more is a good idea.

“One of the great narratives out of our past expansion was Kentucky, like two years ago, played in College Station,” he said on the show. “That was the one time in 12 years that Kentucky football played Texas A&M on the road. They sold every ticket available because people wanted to be a part of it. It was new. It was fresh. It was a different place.”

Most Kentucky fans that were in attendance that night echoed the sentiments made by Sankey. The current format doesn’t allow for fans to experience the different environments throughout the conference unless they’re in your division.

“You want to find the balance,” Sankey added. “Once every 12 years was skewed too far so how can you swing that pendulum a little bit so that you can get more frequency, more familiarity and it feels like a conference even with a larger number of teams.”

Sankey went on in the interview to discuss his thoughts on the future of the NCAA and how the NIL era will affect college sports as a whole. The interview begins at the 2:14:00 mark.