MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. -- Greg Sankey brought the jokes on Monday. The usually stern SEC commissioner was lighthearted, even jovial with reporters during his opening address in the underbelly of the Hilton Sandestin ahead of this week’s spring meetings.
But as Sankey came toward the close of his remarks, he turned borderline introspective about the current state of college sports and the challenges of leading amid a massively transformational period.
“What we’re dealing with is historic change,” he said. “And I have to check myself on this all the time. So if you want a confession, something to Tweet, here’s this: Having to move from a system that was seen as working pretty well …. into something much different has been a healthy exercise.
“But those of us that knew the then and the now have to constantly check ourselves and not go back to the old way of thinking.”
Sankey and his league are almost at odds. Where the SEC’s athletic directors and presidents are decrying the current system and desire talks of a potential breakaway, Sankey is a man who understands the complications and ramifications of such rhetoric.
The SEC, he says, is unlikely to make a determination on College Football Playoff format and expansion while on the Florida Panhandle. The governance piece? That’s more complex.
There’s ample consternation among administrators within the league around the College Sports Commission and millions of dollars being held effectively in limbo as NIL deals are vetted by the newly minted clearinghouse.
Such hold ups have created murmurs of rebellion, of a breakaway, of self governance. What any of that means, at least in part, ought to be ironed out this week.
But as Sankey looks inward toward the challenges of leading in a turbulent time, he recognizes that the SEC and those who desire to remain a part of college sports’ upper echelon have to choose to eventually be governed by some kind of rules.
Whether that leads to the SEC taking on oversight at a conference level remains to be seen, but it will almost certainly be a top line item as athletic directors and presidents gather under a single roof off the Gulf of Mexico.
“People have to buy in,” Sankey said. “Schools, campuses, coaches have to want to be governed. But that governance system has to keep up with the change that’s happening around it.”
