SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey Makes Comments on Eliminating Divisions
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ATHENS - SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Wednesday that the league could eliminate football divisions in the future.
“(We had) have almost a year-long conversation when we go to 16 what will our divisions look like, or what our schedule will look like,” Sankey told Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer at the Sports Business Journal’s Awards. “Those possibilities include no divisions. It is on our list we are not going to do it in a knee-jerk way in reaction to today’s decision.”
On Wednesday the NCAA cleared the way for conferences to eliminate having divisions in order to determine representatives in their conference championship games. The Pac 12 announced Wednesday that it had moved away from division champions determining the two teams playing for that league’s title out west.
“Starting in 2022, the two teams with the highest conference winning percentage will face off in the championship game. This change would have resulted in a different Pac-12 Football Championship matchup in 5 of the past 11 years,” the league said in a statement.
According to FanDuel, the Georgia Bulldogs have +150 odds to win the SEC during the 2022 season.
In the SEC, the winner of the SEC Championship Game has gone on to play in the College Football Playoffs each year since it started in 2014. Alabama also played in the CFP without winning the SEC in 2017 - as did UGA in 2021.
“The divisions worked really well for us,” Sankey went on to say. “But when we go to 16 that possibility is front and center for the SEC.
The SEC added both Texas and Oklahoma last summer - pushing league membership to 16 programs. Georgia has played in the SEC East since the league invited South Carolina and Arkansas into the conference in 1992. Expansion in 2012 drew Missouri and Texas A&M into the league with the Tigers awkwardly being placed into the East with the Dawgs, Gators, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Kentucky and Gamecocks.
Sankey said the league was unlikely to stop using divisions before the Longhorns and Sooners join the league, which is scheduled to take place in 2025.
“Unless the sentiment of our league changes greatly the division format works. When we go to 16 that would be the time for an adjustment,” he said.