Friday will mark the one-year anniversary of Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey thinking the league's football season would succumb to the complexities surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.
"It was Thursday, August 6th, and we had just had a presidents call," Sankey said. "We were two weeks from practices beginning. We had already changed our start date and our schedule, and I received a call from a colleague who said, 'I don't think we're going to be able to do this.'
"He then asked, 'Can we stop together?'"
One week earlier, the SEC had revealed an unprecedented 10-game schedule consisting entirely of head-to-head conference matchups, thus eliminating longstanding state rivalries such as Georgia-Georgia Tech and Florida-Florida State. That may have seemed like tangible evidence a season would be taking place, but momentum was crumbling outside the Deep South.
On Aug. 5, Connecticut had become the first Football Bowl Subdivision team to announce it was canceling its season.
"At that point, we were at least two weeks from having to make our decision," Sankey said. "There was a lot that could happen, and we wanted to use that opportunity to find a way. I called the chair of our presidents at that time (Kentucky's Eli Capilouto) to share my update, and he wondered if we would be able to do this. I told him that I didn't know the answer of whether we could play or not. I told him I didn't even know how to ask that question in the Southeastern Conference.
"It was a very honest moment. Things were so uncertain, and it made for a busy weekend, but on Monday the 10th, I issued the statement that we would keep trying. People pulled together, and our student-athletes wanted the opportunity. It wasn't easy, but we made it happen."
One day after Sankey's statement, the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences announced they would be postponing their seasons with hopes of playing in the spring of 2021. Massachusetts also revealed that day it was canceling its season.
Both the Big Ten and Pac-12 would reverse course last September and decide to compete, but multiple schools in those leagues struggled to stage most of their games. In the Big Ten, Michigan and Purdue played just six contests, while Maryland competed in five.
It was even worse in the Pac-12, where Arizona State, California, Washington and Washington State played all of four games.
The SEC wound up staging 69 of a possible 71 contests, including the SEC championship game, with only the Ole Miss-Texas A&M and Georgia-Vanderbilt matchups canceled. Sankey was not in the mood for victory laps, however, after Alabama outlasted Florida in Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Dec. 19 to complete the most challenging league season in its 88-year history.
"I think right at the kickoff, I got a call about how the Rose Bowl was changing locations," Sankey said. "There was a level of relief, but we had to turn the page, because there was a lot more work to do. We had a basketball team (South Carolina) on pause two weeks from conference play starting.
"There was this constant churn."
Auburn photo by Todd Van Emst / Auburn kicker Anders Carlson connects on a 39-yard field goal to deliver a 30-28 victory for the Tigers over Arkansas last season before a socially distanced crowd at Jordan-Hare Stadium. The Southeastern Conference was able to stage 69 of a possible 71 games amid the coronavirus pandemic.Leadership will continue
Sankey, the SEC commissioner since June 1, 2015, has agreed to a contract extension that will keep him in that role through 2026.
The SEC's eighth commissioner first joined the league in 2002 as associate commissioner for governance, enforcement and compliance. In addition to navigating last year's football season through a pandemic and landing a 10-year television agreement with ABC and ESPN, Sankey has expanded the league with the recent announcement that Oklahoma and Texas will be joining the conference in 2025.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.