For about a month, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has listened to the wide range of reactions to his conference’s impending expansion, the most pointed being Washington State president Kirk Schulz’s referring to the SEC as “predatory.”
Now Sankey has a response.
“I certainly like the president at Washington State,” Sankey told The Athletic. “I think he’s forgotten that in 2010 the conference in which he currently resides recruited half of the Big 12 members to join its league.”
Sankey went on to point out that the Big 12 contemplated expanding in 2016, the Big Ten added Nebraska in 2011 and Maryland and Rutgers in 2014, and the ACC raided the Big East in the mid-2000s by adding Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College.
“In this circumstance, the SEC didn’t initiate this contact,” Sankey said, doubling down on those reports. “The two universities reached out to us. We’ve not been active in seeking members. I think President Schulz’s description is inaccurate, imprecise and is not representative of the history of conference membership expansion.”
So, how did the most seismic conference additions in … well, perhaps ever, go down? Quickly and quietly.
Texas president Jay Hartzell testified in the Texas Senate on Aug. 2 that he reached out to Sankey in the spring to first broach the subject of the Longhorns and Sooners joining the SEC. Sankey declined to discuss his reaction when he received that call or the details of the initial discussions.
“I do not remember my reaction,” Sankey said. “I know where we are today.”
The vote to accept Texas and Oklahoma occurred on July 29. A lot happened between the time Hartzell initiated contact with Sankey and that date, but almost all of it was behind closed doors and known only to a small handful of the sport’s power brokers.
Like all of the Power 5 conferences, the SEC is run by the presidents of the schools. Those 14 people were the first on each campus to learn the news, and they were aware by the second week in May, a source told The Athletic.
For more than two months, the news about Texas and Oklahoma’s interest stayed at the presidential level. Several league athletic directors confirmed that they were not privy to any information until just prior to the news was leaked.
“We found out a few days before it was public,” South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner told 107.5-FM, his school’s flagship radio station. “It went fast.”
The conference’s coaches had even less warning. In fact, Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin might have been the first to know. Corbin said he found out the night before the story broke July 21 at SEC Media Days. A friend of his, a lawyer from Massachusetts, texted him to let him know it was coming.
Florida football coach Dan Mullen and South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer said they found out when the Houston Chronicle reported it. The news coincided with one of the final weeks of the summer, a time when football coaches try to take a quick vacation.
Beamer’s wife, Emily, read the news on social media as they were driving home from an Atlanta Braves game.
“I said, ‘Oh, that’s just rumors,’” Beamer said.
Said Mullen: “I was at our lake house. I was surfing or doing something, hanging out there, and I saw some report. I mean I’ve heard that report before. It happened a couple of years ago that there was a report that all this different stuff happened. But I didn’t take it — to be honest with you — that seriously. I guess that’s the benefit of going first at SEC Media Days, I was already done. When it came up the second day, I called (Florida AD) Scott (Stricklin) and asked him if there was any reality to that? He kind of gave me the scoop of what was going on a little bit.”
Sankey indicated that it was a pretty easy decision to welcome in the school with the largest athletics budget in the NCAA (Texas) and a program that has reached the College Football Playoff three times in the last four seasons (Oklahoma).
“There is a lot of respect for both universities on a national level and both universities’ athletics programs,” Sankey said. “In the end, we had a unanimous vote of our presidents and chancellors to extend an invitation.”
Tanner quipped during his interview on 107.5 that a unanimous vote in the SEC is no great surprise.
“One common theme about the SEC is it’s (always) unanimous,” he said. “Before that door opens, it’s a situation where everybody gets on the same page. That’s one of the reasons our conference is as great as it is.”
Chuck Allen, a member of South Carolina’s board of trustees from 2008 to 2020, expressed surprise at how quickly the deal progressed when so few people knew.
“I was surprised by the servile deference to the commissioner’s discretion and decision,” said Allen, a lawyer and member of the Carolina Hall of Fame and former team captain and defensive lineman for the football team. “I’m a little concerned and surprised with the lack of transparency, lack of disclosure and, to some degree, lack of candor surrounding the decision as historic on a national, regional and local basis as this is. It’s regretful that the constituencies at the member schools were deprived of the opportunity of being able to provide their consent on an informed basis. As a former board member and former player at the University of South Carolina, I see no benefit to us other than the bonanza of revenue that it will generate.”
Asked if he was comfortable with how the SEC handled all aspects of its move, Sankey replied, “Yes.”
He declined to speculate if this move would set off significant moves in the rest of college football but added, “I don’t have any anticipation of further change on our part.”
Interim South Carolina president Harris Pastides, who was serving as the Gamecocks’ full-time president in 2011 when the league added Texas A&M and Missouri, is hopeful the Big 12 and the rest of the Power 5 football conferences are not damaged by the SEC’s move.
“The last thing I am hoping for is that the Big 12 or any other conference collapses as a result of some realignment, and I don’t think that should be expected,” he said. “I would tell you that I support the viability of all of the conferences, including the Big 12. I hope that they do well because I don’t want the collapse of any conference. It’s not good for us to have conferences collapsing, but having said that, I don’t believe that people have to read into it, ‘Here we go again.’ I’ve heard, ‘Well, there are only going to be two conferences someday.’ I don’t believe that is an inevitable outcome of this. I also don’t think it is an enviable outcome of this.”
Now that the deal is done, coaches across the league are putting a positive spin on the news.
“I look at it whether it’s Oklahoma and Texas or whoever else we might add, we get to play those teams, we don’t have to play those teams. Good, we get to go play Oklahoma. We get to go play Texas,” said Beamer, who was an assistant coach with the Sooners last season. “If you come play in the SEC, you’re going to play the best, and if you don’t want to play the best, you need to go play someplace else. That’s the way it always has been in the SEC and the way it always will be.”
Coaches have already started selling the move to recruits as further proof of the league’s dominance.
“We tell recruits all the time, ‘You want to play against the best, other than the NFL, it’s the SEC.’ That shows itself every single year in the NFL Draft,” Beamer said. “When you’ve got two premier programs in all of college football doing everything they can to try and join the SEC, that’s the ultimate mic drop in the office when you have recruits there because it is what it is. They want to come play in this league, that should tell you something as a high school prospect.”
The SEC announced upon its vote to accept the Longhorns and Sooners that the teams will begin competing in the league in the 2025 season, and Sankey is sticking by that timeline.
“I’m sure we were clear in our public announcement that Oklahoma and Texas will join the SEC on July 1, 2025,” he said.
In the meantime, he said he wants his membership to engage in “blue sky thinking” in regard to how to set up the new 16-team conference. The league could simply stick to its East and West divisions or could develop a pod scheduling format. Increasing the conference schedule to nine or even 10 games is also on the table.
“We have an opportunity to take a step back, look at the big picture, and I don’t put restraints upon that thinking as we move toward July of 2025,” Sankey said. “I expect from conversations with members we will start to establish milestones for planning and preparation, but I have not done that because I want to take a broad look at our approach as we move forward.”
The SEC’s most recent additions will make it the largest Power 5 conference barring a preemptive expansion by one or more of the other leagues. It also strengthens the conference’s position in the increasingly likely event the NCAA’s influence wanes or evaporates entirely.
“When I went through the interview process in early 2015, my view was the SEC has established its own identity,” Sankey said. “We’re certainly a part of the NCAA structure — and that’s important — but our identity stands alone. We’re going to be good participants. We also expect significant updating of the NCAA’s role and model and I think there are some hard conversations ahead.”
The NCAA announced in July it will hold a constitutional convention in November to consider significant changes to the organization’s structure. The NCAA originally indicated that convention would include 22 members but then named 23 to the panel.
“It is a little bit of a challenge to follow the bouncing ball of what is anticipated to happen with the NCAA’s constitutional convention,” Sankey said. “That brings me back to a focus on the enhancement, the strengthening, the effectiveness of the Southeastern Conference as an organization.”
Now Sankey has a response.
“I certainly like the president at Washington State,” Sankey told The Athletic. “I think he’s forgotten that in 2010 the conference in which he currently resides recruited half of the Big 12 members to join its league.”
Sankey went on to point out that the Big 12 contemplated expanding in 2016, the Big Ten added Nebraska in 2011 and Maryland and Rutgers in 2014, and the ACC raided the Big East in the mid-2000s by adding Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College.
“In this circumstance, the SEC didn’t initiate this contact,” Sankey said, doubling down on those reports. “The two universities reached out to us. We’ve not been active in seeking members. I think President Schulz’s description is inaccurate, imprecise and is not representative of the history of conference membership expansion.”
So, how did the most seismic conference additions in … well, perhaps ever, go down? Quickly and quietly.
Texas president Jay Hartzell testified in the Texas Senate on Aug. 2 that he reached out to Sankey in the spring to first broach the subject of the Longhorns and Sooners joining the SEC. Sankey declined to discuss his reaction when he received that call or the details of the initial discussions.
“I do not remember my reaction,” Sankey said. “I know where we are today.”
The vote to accept Texas and Oklahoma occurred on July 29. A lot happened between the time Hartzell initiated contact with Sankey and that date, but almost all of it was behind closed doors and known only to a small handful of the sport’s power brokers.
Like all of the Power 5 conferences, the SEC is run by the presidents of the schools. Those 14 people were the first on each campus to learn the news, and they were aware by the second week in May, a source told The Athletic.
For more than two months, the news about Texas and Oklahoma’s interest stayed at the presidential level. Several league athletic directors confirmed that they were not privy to any information until just prior to the news was leaked.
“We found out a few days before it was public,” South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner told 107.5-FM, his school’s flagship radio station. “It went fast.”
The conference’s coaches had even less warning. In fact, Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin might have been the first to know. Corbin said he found out the night before the story broke July 21 at SEC Media Days. A friend of his, a lawyer from Massachusetts, texted him to let him know it was coming.
Florida football coach Dan Mullen and South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer said they found out when the Houston Chronicle reported it. The news coincided with one of the final weeks of the summer, a time when football coaches try to take a quick vacation.
Beamer’s wife, Emily, read the news on social media as they were driving home from an Atlanta Braves game.
“I said, ‘Oh, that’s just rumors,’” Beamer said.
Said Mullen: “I was at our lake house. I was surfing or doing something, hanging out there, and I saw some report. I mean I’ve heard that report before. It happened a couple of years ago that there was a report that all this different stuff happened. But I didn’t take it — to be honest with you — that seriously. I guess that’s the benefit of going first at SEC Media Days, I was already done. When it came up the second day, I called (Florida AD) Scott (Stricklin) and asked him if there was any reality to that? He kind of gave me the scoop of what was going on a little bit.”
Sankey indicated that it was a pretty easy decision to welcome in the school with the largest athletics budget in the NCAA (Texas) and a program that has reached the College Football Playoff three times in the last four seasons (Oklahoma).
“There is a lot of respect for both universities on a national level and both universities’ athletics programs,” Sankey said. “In the end, we had a unanimous vote of our presidents and chancellors to extend an invitation.”
Tanner quipped during his interview on 107.5 that a unanimous vote in the SEC is no great surprise.
“One common theme about the SEC is it’s (always) unanimous,” he said. “Before that door opens, it’s a situation where everybody gets on the same page. That’s one of the reasons our conference is as great as it is.”
Chuck Allen, a member of South Carolina’s board of trustees from 2008 to 2020, expressed surprise at how quickly the deal progressed when so few people knew.
“I was surprised by the servile deference to the commissioner’s discretion and decision,” said Allen, a lawyer and member of the Carolina Hall of Fame and former team captain and defensive lineman for the football team. “I’m a little concerned and surprised with the lack of transparency, lack of disclosure and, to some degree, lack of candor surrounding the decision as historic on a national, regional and local basis as this is. It’s regretful that the constituencies at the member schools were deprived of the opportunity of being able to provide their consent on an informed basis. As a former board member and former player at the University of South Carolina, I see no benefit to us other than the bonanza of revenue that it will generate.”
Asked if he was comfortable with how the SEC handled all aspects of its move, Sankey replied, “Yes.”
He declined to speculate if this move would set off significant moves in the rest of college football but added, “I don’t have any anticipation of further change on our part.”
Interim South Carolina president Harris Pastides, who was serving as the Gamecocks’ full-time president in 2011 when the league added Texas A&M and Missouri, is hopeful the Big 12 and the rest of the Power 5 football conferences are not damaged by the SEC’s move.
“The last thing I am hoping for is that the Big 12 or any other conference collapses as a result of some realignment, and I don’t think that should be expected,” he said. “I would tell you that I support the viability of all of the conferences, including the Big 12. I hope that they do well because I don’t want the collapse of any conference. It’s not good for us to have conferences collapsing, but having said that, I don’t believe that people have to read into it, ‘Here we go again.’ I’ve heard, ‘Well, there are only going to be two conferences someday.’ I don’t believe that is an inevitable outcome of this. I also don’t think it is an enviable outcome of this.”
Now that the deal is done, coaches across the league are putting a positive spin on the news.
“I look at it whether it’s Oklahoma and Texas or whoever else we might add, we get to play those teams, we don’t have to play those teams. Good, we get to go play Oklahoma. We get to go play Texas,” said Beamer, who was an assistant coach with the Sooners last season. “If you come play in the SEC, you’re going to play the best, and if you don’t want to play the best, you need to go play someplace else. That’s the way it always has been in the SEC and the way it always will be.”
Coaches have already started selling the move to recruits as further proof of the league’s dominance.
“We tell recruits all the time, ‘You want to play against the best, other than the NFL, it’s the SEC.’ That shows itself every single year in the NFL Draft,” Beamer said. “When you’ve got two premier programs in all of college football doing everything they can to try and join the SEC, that’s the ultimate mic drop in the office when you have recruits there because it is what it is. They want to come play in this league, that should tell you something as a high school prospect.”
The SEC announced upon its vote to accept the Longhorns and Sooners that the teams will begin competing in the league in the 2025 season, and Sankey is sticking by that timeline.
“I’m sure we were clear in our public announcement that Oklahoma and Texas will join the SEC on July 1, 2025,” he said.
In the meantime, he said he wants his membership to engage in “blue sky thinking” in regard to how to set up the new 16-team conference. The league could simply stick to its East and West divisions or could develop a pod scheduling format. Increasing the conference schedule to nine or even 10 games is also on the table.
“We have an opportunity to take a step back, look at the big picture, and I don’t put restraints upon that thinking as we move toward July of 2025,” Sankey said. “I expect from conversations with members we will start to establish milestones for planning and preparation, but I have not done that because I want to take a broad look at our approach as we move forward.”
The SEC’s most recent additions will make it the largest Power 5 conference barring a preemptive expansion by one or more of the other leagues. It also strengthens the conference’s position in the increasingly likely event the NCAA’s influence wanes or evaporates entirely.
“When I went through the interview process in early 2015, my view was the SEC has established its own identity,” Sankey said. “We’re certainly a part of the NCAA structure — and that’s important — but our identity stands alone. We’re going to be good participants. We also expect significant updating of the NCAA’s role and model and I think there are some hard conversations ahead.”
The NCAA announced in July it will hold a constitutional convention in November to consider significant changes to the organization’s structure. The NCAA originally indicated that convention would include 22 members but then named 23 to the panel.
“It is a little bit of a challenge to follow the bouncing ball of what is anticipated to happen with the NCAA’s constitutional convention,” Sankey said. “That brings me back to a focus on the enhancement, the strengthening, the effectiveness of the Southeastern Conference as an organization.”
