DALLAS — Greg Sankey couldn’t walk a few steps inside the Omni Hotel downtown without being stopped for a handshake or a quick conversation.
At the center of the college football media world, the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference is one of the most sought-out figures. The conference took over the city to celebrate its two new members — Oklahoma and Texas — and to preview the highly anticipated 2024 season.
On Tuesday at SEC Media Days, Sankey spoke to The Oklahoman to discuss everything from the future of athletic department budgets, the new 12-team playoff, the league’s new media right deal and more.
OU budgeted for less in athletic revenue for the 2025 fiscal year. Where do you see major SEC programs’ budgets going in the future? Is there concern for non-revenue sports?
“The reality is, you're seeing preparations for change and that change is a part of outcomes and lawsuits. When you're in these circumstances, you want to be in the right place. And I think the Southeastern Conference is the right place for our 16 team members to be, but we're going through this preparation for change.
“What does that mean to budgets? We've had conversations among our presidents, chancellors and athletic directors about the importance from the campus perspective of maintaining the breadth of sports that we do. And so I don't go right to, ‘OK, here's a direct outcome.’
“Instead, I think you're seeing the preparation for change that is focused on that objective remaining, which is we want the breadth that we’re offering so we can provide opportunities as we have, but we have to acknowledge the changes taking place.”
How are you approaching from a strategy standpoint with different scenarios in the House case, and who is in that discussion with you?
“We're pretty much biweekly with both our athletics directors and presidents. So those are key, obviously, university council, even the government relations leaders on our campus are important.
“I've said consistently there are five categories of work. We have to deal with courts because of the lawsuits, there’s congressional federal government relations work because that's an opportunity for national standards. We have work and relationships at the state level, our universities are accustomed to that and we have state laws that have been adopted that have started to govern how we run our athletics programs. The conference and campus decision making kind of combined as a fourth and then the NCAA.
“All of those fit together in our consideration for the future. We do have to move in a time efficient manner with settlement terms. That goes through a process and there's no done right now. There's a process that has to be followed. But during that process, we have to be focused on implementation with our campus leaders.”
OU opens its 2024 season with a Friday night game. How do you view Friday night games in the SEC? Is there an emphasis to protect high school sports?
“We don't do it much. In fact, I think I can count on one hand the number of times it's happened in what will be 10 football seasons. This year, we asked our campuses to communicate with their high school athletic association leadership. I know that happened. They're generally anomalous. So it is not like a core objective for us to be playing on Fridays, there are two Thursday games, there's a Friday game and a Sunday game in the first weekend and then you advance to Black Friday. So the Friday after Thanksgiving, we have two games and that's the extent of our Saturday games.
“Keeping in mind, Thursday used to be the domain of colleges, now the NFL has moved in. That Friday after Thanksgiving used to be the domain of colleges, now there's an NFL game played there. Those kinds of tensions that have existed across the board and we've seen a lot of conferences, I think pretty much all but us use Friday as a new core scheduling approach.
“And we've been highly attentive to the importance of high school football. That's why when we have these small number of Friday games, we ask our universities to communicate with the high school athletic association leadership, make sure they’re aware. If there are issues that might arise that could stop that, we want to be attentive to that but when we've done it, I think it's been well managed and choosing the appropriately communicated but again, it's not like the focus and we're gonna move a bunch of games to Friday.”
What are your thoughts on the evolution of the playoff?
“The game is ready for this. I think (CFP executive director Bill Hancock’s) leadership role of being a steady hand and guiding along for the amount of change was incredibly important and very meaningful. And now we're in a new day. I think 12 is very different from four, not just multiple, it's a different approach. It's a different regular season reality, it's a different preparation, leading to what I think will be an equally, if not more successful outcome of determining national champions.”
As an avid marathon runner, have you ever considered the OKC Memorial Marathon?
“I thought about it. The last marathon I ran was in 2010 and then my achilles got the best of me. I also looked at the marathon in Tulsa at the time.”
How critical was the future of the sport when determining negotiations for the league’s new media rights deal?
“Revenue sharing wasn’t in the center of that. … There were, I don't think multitudes the right term, but a level of consideration given to literally dozens of factors. And as we were going to the preparation, we went back to our campuses to ask what their base level priorities are. Obviously, you want to generate revenue.
“And now we're in a circumstance where some of those realities are changing, just like our colleagues are. And so the considerations are different from the current headlines, but the effort to make decisions to secure our future was done knowing that change was coming.”
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