The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Big Noon Conversations: SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey on the Future of the Playoff & Scheduling in CFB

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

In this episode of The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations, FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt heads to Birmingham, Alabama to sit down with SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. In this wide-ranging conversation, the two discuss Sankey’s influence in the landscape of the sport and whether there needs to be an overarching body overseeing CFB. Sankey also gives his thoughts on the future of the College Football Playoff and what areas he feels need to be addressed before the two discuss scheduling in the sport and the challenges that are unique to the SEC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guy makes a bunch of money. He's commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. He just wants to play football games. No, what I said on my press conference is after, you know, 15 years or so of this work, when I look back, I was asked about legacy. I want young people who at that point will be in their late 30s down to their early 20s to say, I'm glad he led because he impacted me in a positive way. Most influential people in the sport talking about the sport globally. This time on the Joel Klatch shows Big Noon Conversations. I talked with one of the most powerful men in college football. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. Commissioner of the SEC, Greg Sankey.

Thanks for joining me, man. Thank you. You made the trip. I did. I did. We're down here in the basement library. This has been such a fun series to talk with the most influential voices in our sport. And we are at such an interesting and important time in our sport.

I don't think that there's ever been this much turmoil and yet at the same time, I can confidently say, I don't think the sport's ever been better, more popular, played at a higher level. I would love to start there. The problems that maybe we have in college football and we can talk about, aren't they champagne problems? I mean, this sport has never been better.

I'll give you credit, first of all, for the right descriptor. I think the right way to view conversations with leaders is about influence. And that's a much better word than power. I think influence and effectiveness become tangible objectives to achieve. And for those of us in these influential roles, we do have a responsibility to have candid, honest conversations to the adaptations around us. Now, I'll offer a departure that I think what's happened to create the champagne moment

is we are so connected now. And what was always done regionally is now done nationally on a very big stage, a very large stage, in a way that's much more accessible, much more available than ever. Yet if you go back and you think about problems, you know, 100 years into the 20s, 1920s, you can read about almost the same type of realities magnified from a health standpoint. So injuries, deaths, risks associated with the competition, arguably were greater. We're much more sophisticated there. Some of the academic realities, I think we've made great progress.

We've not solved all of the issues around economics. We've not solved all of the issues around movement and what we see normally on college campuses around transfer students and how that attaches it. to the young people playing on our teams. But the fact that there's so much attention on these realities is that evidence of the connection, the visibility, and makes it even more important that we work to resolve some of the issues that linger.

And the popularity. You know, it's important for all of us to acknowledge the fact that people are aware and they care, which is a very good thing, because the last thing that you would want would be an apathetic public to what you're dealing with as a sport in particular. I'd love to go back to the connectedness and influence, because I think the two are related. And we've had discussions before in this regard. Let me, I'll ask you a couple of questions and then kind of see where that takes us. do you view yourself as the most influential person in college football?

No. I think I'm in a role that creates a level of influence or provides a platform. I like to think I've been effective on some issues. But if I was to either accept or seek that kind of definition, I think it would be chasing the wrong thing. I think the product of the work on a day-to-day basis, and you'll hear this from coaches, right, about process or focus or consistency of performance. The same way from, if you will, a commissioner or administrative role, I have to be effective in my work. I have to be in a place that has prominence, and then that provides influence. I think that's a byproduct rather than the center of who I am or what I do.

It also comes with, you know, your performance. position and what the conference means in the global aspect of the sport. It is the most influential, powerful, I would argue, conference, and because of its success, your success, over the last 20 years. But if, okay, so if you don't view yourself as the most influential person, do you have someone that you feel someone or something that you feel, someone, that you feel like is the most influential part of our sport? I don't know that I'd ever reduce that to a person. You often hear we need a czar. If you look at the history of czars, they don't end very well. And I truly mean that. I mean, people will say things about me. That's much better said than by me in their

evaluation. I go through an annual and probably a weekly and a daily evaluation of my effectiveness and sometimes the feedback that I provide myself really good, sometimes it's not. I'll go back to say that if we're not collaborating across key points of influence, if you will, key roles, then we're not going to be successful. And by we, I mean me, I mean colleagues. And we've seen when we've not been able to collaborate. Sure. And it reduces effectiveness. Sure.

Doesn't matter how. I think the COVID year is a great example of that, right? I mean, there wasn't a lot of collaboration. Let's just, I mean, say what it is. There were efforts and then divergence. Sure. And I was going to add, you know, coaches are influential. And you can go back to the COVID year.

And did we have differences of perspective within our league from coaches or administrators? or presidents and chancellors, absolutely. What we had built up is trust, though, and I think that's a key word in this connection and collaboration. The ability for us in roles of influence to have the kind of trust that means we don't always have to agree, but we can sit down and have communication and have enough respect for one's opinion

that we can work through some of the hard issues. And that's compromise. I just read a book in one of the comments was, you know, suggesting leadership's about, you know, dictation and authority, that's really not. That's autocracy. Leadership is about communication, collaboration, trust, compromise, readjusting, re-evaluating,

and going back and starting through that process, again, on literally a daily basis. And it is lonely at times. It need not be lonely all the time. And if you go back to your example, a lot of communication. So you start to check that list. A lot of communication, a lot of sharing of information, but ultimately a divergence. And that affected a number of aspects of work.

And you can overcome those things. It takes time. The college football playoff conversation is another example where. That's a big one. Yeah, and I bear responsibility, I'm certain, in some people's evaluation. And my evaluation, there are other centers of responsibility. It's hard work, and we'll have to think maybe differently as we walk through some of the really, really tough issues that are still on the table.

And they are on the table, you know, currently. I don't have to remind you of that. I find it fascinating to know, you know, I have a decent idea. not of exactly what you have to go through every day, but who you're ultimately responsible to, you know, and that is your member institutions, not dissimilar from your colleagues throughout the country, and they're responsible to their member institutions. When it comes time to collaborate, do you believe we need an entity that has the global sport at its core, you know, that is not beholden to a silo, but is more an umbrella over the whole sport.

Is that something that you think that we need or no? In some ways, the question assumes some things. I'm not sure are the right assumptions. Okay. And one is that that would automatically resolve the issues to do that, to have this full convening with authority vested someplace else, than the entities, be they campuses or conferences. And there's a distinction there, would have to say,

you know what, I'm going to contribute fully my decision-making authority to fill in the blank. Sure. And whatever is decided by whomever in leadership is what we will do. We do that in certain ways within college sports. We don't do that universally. So we have a set of NCAA rules. Some of those are being changed or challenged. We have states that have now created mandates

on how we run college sports that can't just be overrun right now by an association. So I don't jump to that because I think it ignores some of the elements that would need to be there. Yeah. On the other hand, when I use the words like collaboration and communication,

It conveys that we have to work across those boundaries to achieve goals. And I can elaborate beyond in any follow-up conversation. But when I'm asked about should there be, you know, football ink, if you will, that says, here's how we're going to do this. That's a very different departure with a lot of what-ifs. Sure. Between the starting line and the finished line of that consideration. And if we've learned anything in the last few years, and in particular in the last few years,

it's that there are, I would even say, severe unintended consequences to small changes. We see that with, and not even small changes, but Transfer Portal and NIL, even something as small as the early signing day. Right. And what that has now created and some of it, some angst as far as the calendar. I'm a big proponent, and I know I've actually heard you talk about this. we've actually had conversations about this, of really taking a hard look at the football calendar and how we operate. When are the periods that players are mobile? When are the periods when they're not? So that we are giving them the best opportunity to find the seats that they need and the scholarships that they need. We're giving the coaches the best opportunity to not only lead

their team, but then also recruit outside student athletes, whether that's in the transfer portal or from high school. It's a long-winded basic conversation of like, I think that we need to really dive in and look at the calendar in college football and start to fix some of the things that make it really difficult to operate. I agree. And some of that work has been done at around pieces of recruiting. And you'll see that play out I expect in coming weeks, if not months. The question is, do we go deep enough? So you highlight an issue. And if you think about the preceding question on contributing decision-making authority to some centralized entity to just say this is how we're going to do things. You think early signing. We were very clear

and very intentional to say you are going to shift elements. of what happens in football around decision-making, whether that's around young people or around programs. And now we watch the pattern of coaching transition take place. And lo and behold, you go back to probably a letter I wrote in 2009 that says you're going to shift much earlier the hiring pattern. And we see it now constantly. And if you go back to when Alabama hired Nick Sabin,

that was a January decision. And we had that in other examples. And that wasn't that long ago. I mean, that's within 15 years. Now, if you wait to hire a head coach in January, the world has passed you by, probably for two recruiting cycles, if you take it through. Sure. Because you're into those schools for the next year activity in January. If you just said, you decide, you know, how do we provide the level of input?

And now, how do we dig in to understand what's really happening? And I would start from the reality. There are several points of concern. So one is young people making decisions, providing the right information, the best information, and the right timing to make that decision. We've added transfers.

So there's a whole bunch more movement around the same time. One set of young people, high school students, were trying to figure out where to go to college. It's all at the same time. And one of those key points of information is what does that roster look like?

And now you have, coaching transition, which is another key factor for those first two groups. How do I make a decision about where to align my life with people in whom I have a level of confidence and trust that they're ready to prepare and invest in me for my development? And all of a sudden, they migrate away. Those are really important issues that I don't know if I would use the word difficult they just require work so if you walked in our back door there's a sign that our staff sees every day there are two signs one of them says problems yield to effort so here are the problems are we putting the right effort into the resolution um and that should rightly be a point of concern

and perhaps where our collaborative effort needs to develop maybe i take a step back and say in talking with individual coaches since the end of the regular season so somewhere locker rooms at bowl games where the frustration came out some were individual meetings when i was on campus in in january and february we made december miserable for them yeah um and then we've you can make an argument sorry to interrupt april may june too and you can make an argument that's gonna drive coaches out of college that's where i was headed that should be in college football you stole it from me yeah um you i set you up to look smarter i appreciate that this is what we're ready to do right I appreciate that.

But that's, I mean, inherently, the concern we should have long term is we lose the good people from the game. Because the good people say, you know what? I don't want to do this. I have a spouse. I have children. I have relationships. I have my own mental well-being, which is not that we talk about student athletes'

mental health. Our coach's mental health is challenged in this environment. Yep, they make a lot of money, but money doesn't pay the bills. You're dealing with some of the points of mental health that this constant pace and this constant turmoil can produce. Let me throw out an idea, you know, and listen, I'm sure you get a million napkin ideas thrown at you. The better way to do it is to write me a letter and send it to him without a return address. Those are the ones that, okay, those don't have the most impact. They don't, right?

You never know what's behind that envelope when you open it. I think that we take too big of a break after the regular season, which, you know, I think that like a teenager, the absence of busyness can breed, you know, interesting behavior. And I think as the playoff grows and we look about, we look at how we build, you know, this playoff moving forward. If we can move it closer to the regular season and move some of these issues that we talk about like recruiting, building a roster after the season, you may have coaching changes start to get moved later. You may have a situation where high

school athletes know the seats that are open and then more importantly transfer athletes know the seats that are open versus just leaving into a portal and never getting a spot again, what would you think about trying to build the playoff closer to the regular season and not take such a long break after the conference championship games? What's contemplated is two weeks and then about 10 days. So depending on one's ranking, the break is an open week. And, you know, for my position, there's some health issues when you go through the season, provide that break, and then provide a rotation of games. Because there are also demands in December on campus that an NFL team will never experience

a young person on a college campus. Well, conclusion of the academic semester, and then final exams. So I would generally say I think we have a decent pacing where we place those games long terms, a bit of a question because you have factors of conference championship games army navy NFL playoff games the NFL regular i should say the NFL regular season which has been extended then the playoff games and how do you fit around those pieces so i think there's work to be done there i i agree in that sense and then on the the the kind of space issue one of the the interesting pieces of what we're dealing with right now is wanting to to respect genuinely the student athlete voice and that's a point of influence that we have to

consider. Now I'm interested in the voice of the young person who's a scholarship football student athlete who is recruited who plays. To make those decisions, we need those voices, not their advisors, not their the people around them, not the the swimmer. to talk about the football season or the baseball player or the golfer who's playing in college. We need to hear from high-level football players. You want to know the group that made

one of the most important contributions during COVID to our decision-making was our football student-athlete leadership group who met that definition, some of whom are in the NFL now. I'll be swabbed every day if I can play on Saturday. I mean, that's a pretty clear guiding principle

that you weren't hearing through the summer of 20 in the New York Times of the Washington Post, but that's the voice I wanted. And there were players in every league, whether it was Trevor Lawrence at Clemson or Justin Fields at Ohio State, Amundrauss St. Brown at USC, doing all those things. And you're exactly right. Those are the voices and the influential perspectives that I feel like move the needle more than anything. So now bring them in. And when we've talked about the playoff, we've asked about adding games,

which isn't universal, but at a high level, there's a potential for an additional game. And the feedback from our leadership council is it's not the number of games. It's what happens over the full year. Out of season, spring, off season, summer workouts, preseason, and then back to end season. So how do we think deeply from that perspective? So if you go back to that calendar structure, end of season, downtime, How do we keep young people engaged in a healthy way? Because I do think, to your point, when you're busier, you're more effective.

There's an inflection point when you're too busy. You do need a break. We all need open weeks now and then. But our student athletes are going to have to be a part of that. We've kind of pivoted to the old advisory council. Let all the sports contribute and make their observations. But we have to bring in that voice as well. There's a huge element that we haven't even touched on that directly impacts and has basically thrown a huge can of gasoline on the period of the calendar that we're talking about, which is NIL.

And I'm a huge proponent of NIL. I have been ever since I was a player. You know, I've always thought this. And I had an interesting perspective because I played minor league baseball and I was able to come back and be totally eligible. In fact, I played minor league baseball with a guy named Moweldy Moore who played football at Tulane while he was playing baseball, and then he went on to a career in the NFL. And then I go to Colorado and I'm a teammate of Jeremy Bloom, and he basically has to quit football because Oakley wants to give him a deal for being a mogul skier. So ever since then, I've just had an infatuation with this topic. And I've always felt like a player should always retain their own name image and likeness.

So that being said, I want to say I am a huge proponent of NIL. What's happening now in NIL with the ability of coaches and influencers, some with less than scrupulous means, the tampering and the inducement side of NIL, I'm not very comfortable with. And when I say that to people, they think like, well, you don't think players should be able to, no, I'm like, no, no, no. I absolutely believe in NIL. What I don't believe in is NIL being used for inducement and for tampering in particular in the portal. What if anything can be done in those two areas. What you've identified is really a layering of issues. So it's not as if we're not dealing with like one problem here. We're dealing with a range.

of realities some of those issues were just kind of cans kicked down the proverbial road over time we dealt with a lot of stuff in the 90s and 2000s and didn't dig into the transfer issue and then when we did dig into it we had a pandemic we had eligibility extensions we had more people staying in a system and it's not the portal it's the control that existed up front control of communication destination and financial aid because remember you had to ask permission to transfer and in certain sports you could transfer and play right away under what was called a one-time transfer exception in other sports you set out a year and then we had grad transfers

with waivers then we had waivers for undergraduates and that was as messy as could be and then in football we added the the four game don't use a season approach and then starting in game five, we'd have mid-September, I'm leaving, I'm going to transfer. Okay, so let's see where we are on transfer. I'm going to try to sort these out. Sure. It's not the portal, it's that controlling set of rules behind the portal that are the issue. The portal is just the venue for raising one's hand to say, I'd like to leave. I think the health of what we've developed to say, you know what, coach shouldn't control

all of that. I think that's the right kind of adjustment. Yeah, player autonomy. Sure. If it came in isolation with the right kind of conversations and the normal four years of eligibility, we would have a different reality than we have now. We didn't have the luxury of the choice, as it turned out, because at the time, those rules were changing.

We had a pandemic. We shut down. We said in 2020, here's the opportunity to play, but it won't cost you a season. So we added that on. Some had read about something that's like in their ninth year of college enrollment. I don't know how that happens, by the way. We have second and third year NFL players younger. Yep.

Than people playing in college right now. So the basket has been turned upside down. So let's just understand that. I got the transfer issue personally. We went from a 365-day portal to a 60-day portal. to a 60-day portal. I think that was a great change. 45 days at the end of the end of the regular season,

then 15 at the end of spring. So I think the portal opens up in now mid-April through. So we're going to have a little bit of discomfort, is the way I like to say. And looking back at what we learned in December and January this year, I think we shorten that 45 days. Not everyone will like that. But what you saw was when the portal opened,

the day after bowl placement. So every sport, the day after postseason selection is when the portal opens. The first week or two, it's the exact behavior anticipated. A bunch of people who said, I don't want to be here, I want more playing time, I didn't make the right choice, I want to be closer on whatever it is,

raise their hand on the portal and said it's time to leave. After that two weeks, a lot of stories, anecdotal, admittedly, where you have influencers, if you will, third parties, agents, people that we don't know saying, hey, I got a deal for you if you leave. That's not namers and likeness. That's not. Some have described it as bribery. Someone have described it as inducements. Yeah. That's not what it's supposed to be. And so I would suggest that one step is let's shorten the December portal. and allow those decisions to be made for entry over a two-week period of time,

and then they'll play out and there'll be communication. There'll be another learning experience because there's not a lot of research on this. Also, I'm highly concerned, and this will sound like I'm in the ivory tower. So I'm going to enter the ivory tower, which is I sat in a couple of meetings with football players on campus who said,

I transferred before name and likeness. It's happened twice, right out of the left field with me. I transferred before name and image and likeness, wasn't happy. Nobody told me about the impact on my academic options. When you transfer, not every credit transfers, you may not be able to enroll in the program you see. And we've always had concern about being directed into majors. If you go back to those last four weeks of the mid-year portal,

when those people were having those whispers and the third parties and the influencers and the agents, I don't know of anybody who said, well, they really helped me understand my academic reality before I made the decision. That's such a great point.

And that is a long-term life implication. You know, in my experience, people, particularly young people haven't developed from maturity standpoint, spend all they make. And we'd better be thinking about developmental issues. You know, the access to this money

at 18 or 19 years old. There's John Grisham writes novels. He wrote a novel about a quarterback and his observation was the worst thing in life is to reach your peak at 19 years old. That's a personal psychology issue. That's a societal issue, a sociological issue, and it's also a cultural issue.

And we're introducing rapid change into people's lives without perhaps the attachment to how you manage that. And so that then transfers into name image and likeness. You know, football is going to be there and then it's going to evaporate. And there's those. I mean, you've lived the life where you've been able to stay attached to the sport. Coaches have stayed attached to the sport. What are we going to do with the 97% or whatever the NCAA's number that don't go pro or don't have that attachment? Are we fostering their lifelong development? I don't see that being talked about anywhere substantively. And I think I think

one of the reasons why is even as I speak this I know there are people listening saying the guy makes a bunch of money he's commissioner of the southeastern conference he just wants to play football games not what I said on my press conference is after you know 15 years or so of this work when I look back I was asked about legacy I want young people who at that point will be in their late 30s down to the early 20s to say I'm glad he led because he impacted me in a positive way that's been the history of the very vast majority of athletic experiences, it's not perfect. We can all find the negative stories. But the vast, vast majority of young people who walk through here magnify their opportunities.

We don't disrupt their life completely. Again, we're not perfect. We have to think long and hard about what we're seeing right now and whether that does create the platform for success. You bring up an incredible point. I mean, coaches say it all the time. to play good ones good ones say it all the time after big wins you know the next monday or at some point really good coaches who understand the human element will always say as good as this is don't let it be the best thing you've ever done right you know and i've certainly heard that in locker rooms before what do you want to be defined by that's right a moment at the end of a game that's a moment in my late 50s i look back and think well i thought well i thought

where my moments, now I never had these moments. There are so much out there ahead. And that's really how we have to help people prepare. And we talk about all the time now about mental health. And there is a sector of players that may never earn the same money in their life as what they're earning right now. In order for the changes in structure to start to take shape, it's going to be really difficult, because as we've seen with the NCAA's court cases, you know, you can't just come in and throw huge rules and say like, no, but don't worry, it's going to be great. And it'll be better for the student athlete.

Therefore, at least in my limited scope, and you would have a better idea of this, outside of federal legislation, creating a more blanket layer so that we don't have schools and conferences operating in so many different ways because of state legislators, which you referenced earlier. So federal legislation around NIL and things of that nature, or a... an association in which you collectively bargain with. Are there other paths that you see a potential in that can help with the guardrails in order to alleviate some of those issues that you just brought up? Let's go back to the earlier question about just the onset of name image and likeness. We said as a league in 2018, 2019, the worst way to do this is state by state. We don't, you know, start a railroad in New York and when it gets to Pennsylvania heading south,

we have to unload all the cargo, put it on a different railroad because the tracks are a different size. And we are talking about a national endeavor. This is not a state by state set of high school associations. This is national championships at the highest level of collegiate sport. And that needs a national standard. And we've had that, whether you liked it or not. for years and that's been degraded and the biggest factor in that degradation has been different state laws 30-something now and in fact states that adopted

effective laws or healthy laws backed off when they saw other states didn't have any laws and their universities were at a competitive disadvantage even in states where there were effective laws I know of no enforcement of those laws at the state level so those those are the reality that inform, that's the worst way to set up a national name, image, and likeness standard. So the pivot is, well, federal legislation could accomplish that baseline standard. There obviously are court cases where there could be outcomes that establish either a very, very open standard or some description.

And some of this has been validated in other court cases where we can maintain national standards or even conference standards. Those are realities. When you do look at history, some of the big changes have been compelled externally. Through government action, the states, to a certain extent Congress, Title IX, or the courts, be it television broadcast changes in the 80s, or some of the recent court cases around student athletes and the support that flows to them. Now, all of that said, let's not lose sight of almost the first question. if I were you, and I'm not, but you played at a time when it was good, but right now it's even better. The support provided, nutrition, academics, mental health, coaching, technique, preparation for what's next, visibility. There's no better time to be a student athlete.

And so we have to make these changes while still protecting how we've grown and learned. And I don't think that collectively we are given the kind of recognition. Not that I'm complaining for just the incredible experiences present on our campuses right now. Well, let me turn that around. What if I said that a different way? I think one of the biggest failures in intercollegiate athletics has been their PR failure to get ahead of that. You know, they allowed a narrative for whatever reason to perpetuate that the players weren't being taken care. care of. And so the outrage grew on the outside as if there was massive exploitation when

even those of us that played in a different era would tell you like, well, no, I mean, you're not necessarily exploited necessarily, right? Yes, you don't own your name, image, and likeness. But I think that- Can I just correct that? Yeah. We never owned name image and likeness. That's one of those misnomer. The national standard was you're not going to engage in that economic activity during a period of time if you choose to be a college athlete. What's interesting is the college has never retained anything around name image and like this after someone's departure. Now that may be a fine point, but there are examples in sport, professional sport where people enter clubs or they enter points of access competitively

and they've signed that away. Yeah. And one of the concerns we should have right now, and this is why I offer not to be disagreeable, is we have no idea what's being signed. signed in these agreements. Well, I couldn't agree more. And I know firsthand of agreements that have been signed that are in perpetuity. Exactly. And I don't know exactly. You talked about some of the students and that our advisory panel saying, I didn't have

a good idea of the academic consequences of the transfer portal. I think that you would absolutely hear about the long-term financial consequences of a poor business deal through an IL. And I know that that's happening out there. And those stories need to be told. That's right. I'm not the one to tell those stories. If you go back pre-COVID with our leadership council, we went through, and I let it just,

and I'm like, you have complete permission to talk. We developed over time, I think, a decent rapport. Here are the realities. You know, the high-level competitors said, you know what, I'm not sure I want to deal with that. I'm here. I have educational expectations. I want to develop and grow. I have competitive expectations.

And I think more about what's next and how I prepare for that than, you know, a local restaurant deal on a Tuesday night. And then we had some, that group with wisdom, we said, but I have teammates who need these opportunities, who don't maybe have the economic access or some of the support that I can access. And so that's part of the balance. But I think that's really insightful as we think about how we carry this forward back to kind of that national standard. I don't think there's anyone right now who says we stop or we pull fully we pull fully back to where we were But in essence we have to think about the protections for young people so that they're not signing for what seems like a lot of money at 18 years old And all of a sudden they're a first round draft pick at 23 and they realize there's an entanglement and now they're in a court case

Without the type of cleanliness around these deals that that would be much more optimal. We have to adjust this system. Yeah. And we need help to do it to do it properly. It's not as if it's as neat and clean as some people will suggest. What I what I told our coaches, we had a little bit of dispute last year that was public between some coaches. I said, look, wait, a little bit of a dispute? This, yeah, this is you have to understand. It's never going to be the way that it was. When we met with all 14, 100 percent, my opening line was not to yell, pound my fist, point fingers, it is never going to be the way that it was. The transfer realities are not going to go the same way. The money is going to continue to grow. The expectations, the intensity, the visibility,

the opportunity. Most of those words are great things, by the way, not negative. It's never going to be the way that it was. And you have to understand that. But it doesn't have to be the way that it is. And between those two things, what's not going to resolve the discomfort that I've talked about before is accusations, complaining, or simple solutions. And you know what a simple solution is? When anybody says to me, if they just, and then fill in the blank after the word just, that's a simple solution. What we have right now in college athletics, college football in particular, is a set of prior decisions. that have to a certain extent limited some of our options. Some of those come from the state action.

Some come from court outcome. Some came from we passed on opportunity 20 or 30 years ago. We can't rewind the tape and just go back and magically resolve those issues. And so what we need is, and this is again, what I said to our head football coaches, is deep thinking with meaningful ideas and the willingness to talk through those ideas to figure out if there's an opportunity to resolve some of the discomfort, some of the problems right now. So, Greg, you're all of a sudden, in the span of basically four years,

you went from being the newest commissioner and the Power 5, if you want to call it that, A5, to now you're the most senior, you know, and not obviously in age, but Jim's now with the ACC. Tony Petiti was just announced as the brand new commissioner for the Big Ten, George Klovkov in the PAC-12, and obviously Brett Your Mark. What I think is fascinating is now all of a sudden you and Jim Phillips are the minority in terms of your background and coming through the system, almost being kind of a promotion from within. I know Jim came from being a Big Ten athletic director, but now the others have come from,

different sectors. And it's, I'm sure, provided some interesting conversations when all of you guys, and you haven't talked with Tony about this yet, but when you guys all sit down and you start talking about the structure of something like the college football playoff, which you've been working on now for years, how do you get them up to speed and how much new influence from someone outside of the industry helps your perspective? The beginning of the question, you know, you gave the half perspective. I'm like the longest tenured at this point, or maybe that means I'm the closest to, like, transition away.

Maybe my time. And it's, it is interesting because there was a period of time. You know, Jim had a 30-year run, John Swofford, 20 plus years. You're talking about Jim Delaney, John Swofford at the ACC. Yeah. 13 here. but you know 10 11 12 in different conferences Larry Scott was in the double digits and as was Bob Bolsby so all of those guys who'd been in rooms together Larry

being the one outsider you're right it's it's changed and I think that can be helpful you know different perspectives so somebody comes from running big events around casinos you understand that business in a different way as sports gambling emerges or big events somebody runs an NBA somebody works in broadcast media or head of major or in the office of the commissioner of major league baseball so I think it's helpful to gain even more perspectives there's a lot of like why did you do this so there's opportunities for dialogue we should all value those and use those to educate each other you know those of us who've been around a little bit saying well why was this decision

made and why do you operate in this way and why is it so heavily regulated and why can't Can't we just make a decision like that and affect change? And as we're asked those questions, we used to think about, actually, some of that's a really good point. So I think it could be an opportunity for your in greater collaboration as we think through things. I particularly look forward to the communication with Tony. We know him a bit from his time with CBS. I got to spend time with he and the commissioner of Major League Baseball and some of the staff in a meeting. and he'll have a lot to do and a lot to catch up because it's a busy time.

None of us get to ease into these jobs any longer. And I think George and Brett and Jim will all tell you that. And Tony would tell you that as well after a few months. In a perfect world, how would you like to see the playoff look in 26? Obviously, I call it kind of the Band-Aid expansion in 24 and 25. That's fair. Right. We get some sponsorship money for that.

Yeah, that's right. You throw it out. But in 26, you have a much more clean palette to operate from and slate to operate from. What do you want to see? I'll go back to the evaluation of the model that was directed by the president's focused on 26. So thank you for reading that press release with intent. And then if possible, expand early. So a lot of work and a lot of attention on the early expansion.

I think rightly so we need to be thinking about 26 because that's tomorrow. Sure. In our work. What I would like to see is the ability to have some cleanliness to the conclusion of the current set of agreements. And that's with the broadcaster with the bowl games with the other entities attached so that we can then make decisions in the marketplace. fully. I think that's really, really healthy for the game of college football. So that's big picture. From the standpoint of the whens, I do think we have to look at the calendar. And that's the discussion we had about the year-long calendar. And that also means location, too, the calendar and

location. Place games, yeah. And then when those games are played at the end of the season, that then leads into sites, date, sites, times. I do think there has to be some spacing, particularly at that time of year because of travel, which will be different. And that's both for fans and participants. And then recovery and preparation. If we go back to the fall of 2018, particularly December of 2018, was to me a really important moment. So we'd had selection.

We had some teams left out that people were adamant, should have been in. And the cries for expansion increased from within the system. And by within the system, I mean within the five conferences, really from former colleagues. We went to a meeting in Santa Clara. The president said it's too early to be predicting anything. We're going to create a review. And the presidents will decide.

And you fast forward. And at the end of it, the presidents were the ones who decided. So that was fulfillment. And then in between, we tried to. to think about with a small subcommittee rather than a group of the whole. And all of that was divulged. There were no secrets about who was on. And you had a reluctant participant, me, who said, four is fine. You had others. It's been amazing for you guys. Yeah. We can go up and I'll polish off my six trophies if you want out of. Six. Like take me back to 06, right? Well, they'd go all the way back

then. And you think about the number of teams since nine. So in 25 years, that was Tennessee's victory in the national championship in LSU, in Florida, in Alabama, in Auburn. And now we're seeing what's happening with Georgia. The number of teams that have captured national championships out of this league is remarkable. And that's unique. That is part of what sets us apart. So we didn't have to expand. And I meant that.

Even after we announced the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, I'm still comfortable staying at four. I don't think we're going to have fewer teams in the four than we've had. But the feeling was that we weren't building upon the existing health of college football to the future health of college football, particularly because you really have an entire segment of the country not involved in the national championship. and that's the West Coast. And it's not even the national championship, I would argue. It's even maybe more brought access to it. You know, I've argued that the 12th.

The national championship event, just to be clear. Correct. And I've argued. Can I just add? Sure. That I think for us, even in the southeastern conference footprint, you know, Bryce Young is from California. Yeah.

We have players from Washington, from Oregon, and they're all invited, by the way, from Arizona, from Utah. We've had players from the Big Sky Conference region. We want college football and high school football to be as strong as possible across the country. And I think that's why the access to your point is really important to be in the national championship event, to be in that playoff. And I've argued that more programs need to be able to define themselves as successful. You know, so for so many years in college football, you know, you could define yourself as successful for going to a bowl game or even the level of bowl game. You know, I've argued that Wisconsin's a great example of this. They've never competed for a national championship. And yet,

they were able to build a program through this definition of success based on New Year's Day bowl, rose bowl, you know, and that elevated the stature of their program. I do think that that has been almost eliminated from the sport outside of the four participants in the playoff. Even those prestigious bowl games from the past can't necessarily define you as successful for recruits, maybe even some of your fan base. So an expansion to 12, at least in my estimation, are we going to get a lot of different champions? I'm not sure. Maybe in six years. However, you've got a lot more teams being able to define themselves as successful and being able to recruit on that level, which I think should, at least hopefully, expand some of what has happened in

college football in terms of the domination that we've seen from six or seven schools. Yeah, there's also the debate about the impact on the regular season. And you'll hear opinions like expanding the playoff diminishes the regular season. That is observed. That comments made in the context of four to 12. Except if you go from when it went from two to four, I think it impacted the regular season more than people understand in the same way because there are a certain subset of both subdivision football programs that define themselves by having the opportunity. And when you created the expectations by expansion and some of those high profile programs

didn't meet that expectation or they had two losses in mid-October, you impact interest. On the other hand, the systems work. You talked about Wisconsin for a period of time. I look at the way Mark Stoops has built the program in Kentucky over the last decade. They've moved to a level of sustaining success. And then I transfer to not just the teams that actually access the 12, but those who come November 1st are still in consideration,

are still in the hunt. And even if they stumble. Those games are still interesting. They are. And so I actually think there is an opportunity to increase interest in the regular season. I agree with you. We actually, on the show, throughout the month of November, I did a, here's who has a chance now to go to the playoff.

Here's who would have a chance to go to a 12-team playoff. And just seeing the last. list of teams that would have access to the 12-team playoff. We were in November, mid-November, there's 30 teams on that list. You're telling me that those fan bases wouldn't want access, you know, and so I think that that's a huge piece. Now, last thing that I want to ask you about is the connectivity of the 12-team playoff really does kind of like, you know, we've gone through college football, and you could kind of operate in silos, but the connectivity of the sport has never been more significant than it is or going to be.

And I think that that is a big issue for scheduling, both in non-conference games and in conference games. And the way that each league decides to set up their conference schedule. And from the outside looking in, no dog in the fight, I would just say, regardless of number, it feels like for my seat, we should all be trying to play a similar schedule makeup. Would you agree with that or do you disagree with that? When we had Oklahoma and Texas, I think we have four of the five historically most successful programs in the country. and there's a rigor here that doesn't exist. I can go ask football experts.

No, I would agree with you. A lot of people think I don't think that. By the way, they're like, oh, hey, you're an SEC hater. I'm not. You guys are the best, toughest, deepest conference in the country. And so there's a depth. And we're going to have that debate as part of our expansion about the number.

Now, what is interesting is naturally, you've seen a number of our programs that have been on the very successful in, adding a 10th high, high quality opponent through non-conference scheduling. And on Home and Homes. Alabama is doing that now. I think that's really exciting. The Texas came last year and it was fantastic. That's where I was, you and I spent time in Austin.

And you think about the atmosphere. And I was asked at halftime by some of the Austin media, like, isn't this environment great? I said, well, it's familiar, which I guess is my SEC arrogance. And it was. And that's, I think, what we can build. But our decisions about scheduling will have a lot of factors, non-conference game access, the number of conference games, how we place games and how we schedule within the conference context

while we try to spread conference games throughout the season. We're somewhat unique in that we start week two with really important games. If you're going to play in week two, That means you're going to have to fill some games out later in the season with non-conference foes. Yeah, but it gives me opportunity to take a shot. Yeah, right? You know, in November when Mercer rolls in, I get that. That last game, as I recall, was 65 to 7, wasn't it?

It was. I was there. So there's something different happening in the SEC. Listen, you guys. I will say, you know, the competition with Ohio State was phenomenal. I think we've got some games there scheduled. And, you know, we haven't played the Big Ten in the regular season. season. Those would be exciting, I think, for the country. You know what? I would love to see. And this is, I'm not going to say all we need to do is just, I will say, it would be phenomenal.

And I do think it would drive parity to mimic, although not mirror, what the NFL does in terms of holding spots on schedules for where you finish the previous year. And maybe it's more of a two-year rolling basis. I do think that there's an operative. There's an operation. where one non-league game for everybody in the country is saved annually for where you finish and you match up against other leagues, I think that that could present even more value for television networks, for fans, and in particular in fan experience. So part of the fun of watching commentary around the COVID season was, look, you can schedule games on Monday that you play on Saturday. You don't have to do all of this. So there are,

so there are some lingering issues about how we make those decisions that have to be resolved. Sure. We actually, as part of our format, looked kind of at that model for our own conference schedule. You know, one of the differences... A bit of a parody-driven model. Yeah, but one of the differences here is, like, you could send, not so I'm a Buffalo Bills fan, you could send, you know, Buffalo to Detroit two times in a row. You're not frequently going to do that between, you know, Alabama and Auburn, for example.

You're not going to do that. So we had some limitations. I do think it'll be interesting to see, and I tend to think we've seen a little bit of adaptation around non-conference scheduling with the recognition. You could lose a couple of games of the high-quality schedule and have access. You know, by comparison last year, Alabama was fifth.

Tennessee was six. Tennessee beat Alabama on the last play of the game in Knoxville. Alabama lost two games on the last play of the games in Knoxville and Baton Rouge. those teams have opportunities. And I don't think anybody, even in the top four, was going to be excited about playing those two in a playoff. Those that don't know, Greg and I developed a great relationship

actually during COVID, just texting about the sport and ways to help. So let's unpack it so everybody can know. In early July, people were making. decisions outside of the SEC. And I called one weekend, all of my presidents, and said, where are you on opening campus and where are we on thinking about playing football? And they were going to go back to residential learning. You and I had an encounter, I think, the previous December at the Football Foundation event.

I had your cell phone number. So one Saturday, it's all my presidents are we going to make an effort? And absolutely, we have confidence in you. The next weekend, I texted like, six of my staff and said, go back to last year on this very Saturday. We had just finished football media days. Give me the five reasons we were going to play college football that fall. And if anybody sent money or TV is one of their five reasons or one or alternately,

I said the other three or four are okay, but I want you to take away the money in TV and say, why do we play college football? So I sent those to our staff and I thought, I have like this cell phone full of really smart people that know college football. I didn't ask any of our current coaches or current ADs or current presidents. I went to Kirk Herb Street first. Went to Gary Danielson because they'd do our games. I had your cell phone number and I asked you the question.

Gene Chiswick, who had been on our network, had coached in the league, Mark Richt. Went kind of all around. Archie Manning, Jim Delaney, Roy Kramer, a number of former commissioners, Mike Trangeese. And I probably had 50 answers. I still have many of them in a file. And some, you know, came right back, five reasons. I said, hey, what if it's not money in TV? What is it? And you learned about connection.

You know, the two most important answers were provided by Big Ten guys. Gary Danielson, even though he's on our games with CBS, but he's a Purdue grad. and Jim Delaney. And they both really recast my thinking because of some things I'd read earlier that year and they said, you know, last year was the 150th season of college football. Remember those patches? Yeah, I remember. Will there be 151st? And they both almost wrote the same thing. And it's like a light bulb went off in my head because I had, I had read a book on Winston Churchill's leadership early in his time as prime minister and it's like, wow, we played football. during World War II.

Now, may not have been like it was in 1955 or in 1935, but we played college football. You saw those pictures of the Georgia Tech fans wearing masks in like 1919 during the Spanish flu. And I read a book on the Great Influenza about that time period. And there have been arguably five or six pandemics during that 150-year window. You know what? We played college football somehow. We'd had economic upheaval, the Great Depression, when the SEC was formed in the early 30s. We'd had the civil unrest of the 60s and early 70s.

We'd had war. We'd had economic booms and economic downturns. And you know what we did? We still played college football. And you provided actually a really long perspective, which was that would probably deepen the communication. People talked about connection. They talked about growth. And it wasn't just connection to like all the fans.

It was about connection to community, both within cities, within states, within a team. And so I really started to think about, wow, if we could play 150 consecutive seasons of college football, you know, Florida may have played the military base in Tampa in the mid-40s and only played a couple of games while we play. then we don't have to just do it the way we've always done it. There's a lot more option. And those conversations, and that's one where you and I did kind of develop a little bit more of a point of communication were enormously important to playing football.

So the question you asked me at the beginning about mostly influential, I may have been effective during that period of time. My influence was based on the collaboration and the communication that informed decision-making. And that's why I avoid, you know, you've got this role or that other person has this role. Because I think without the kind of relationships and the ability to have conversation, agree and disagree,

we're not going to be nearly as effective as we can be when we do those sorts of things. Listen, I appreciate your time. This has been a really great discussion. There's probably two more hours if we just hang around and talk.