ATLANTA - Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey did not waste time Monday in setting the tone for his opening address at SEC media days inside the College Football Hall of Fame.
"In this environment, I am proud to say that in my view and in the view of our entire membership, the Southeastern Conference is stronger now than at any other time in our history," he said.
Dominating the most lucrative sport on the college landscape, Sankey's conference earned a 12th national championship in the last 16 football seasons in January when Georgia raced past Alabama 33-18 in an All-SEC final. Though the Crimson Tide are responsible for half of the league's 12 titles during this stretch, Auburn, Florida, Georgia and LSU have celebrated as well.
Yet it's the "this environment" Sankey referenced that has many in his league concerned.
It's an SEC that will have Oklahoma and Texas as part of a 16-member collection in 2025, which is a year after Southern California and UCLA are set to join the Big Ten to give that eventual 16-school contingent representation from New Jersey to the Golden State. In the interim, every other conference will try to remain relevant or stay on life support at the very least.
"I do question what are the guiding principles for college football and athletics moving forward," Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said. "I sure hope it's not about the almighty dollar. I hope it's bigger than TV deals being college football's guiding principles, because every action we take moving forward we lose sight of what we love about this game."
New LSU and former Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly described the latest conference realignment - or conference consolidation - as a game of musical chairs.
"The music is going to stop here, and you're not going to have a place at the table," Kelly said. "I think that's scary for a lot of universities. It's left a lot of internal conversations about where do we go, and I understand that.
"There's the question about Notre Dame and what do they do. Maybe they're better positioned than some, but it's musical chairs, and there are not enough chairs for everybody. That's the current state of college football."
Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey speaks during SEC Media Days, Monday, July 18, 2022, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)With the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, the SEC will have 11 schools that have claimed national championships in football. While any round of colleges bolting one league for another instantly leads to speculation, Sankey insists that 16 is a comfortable number.
Of course, 10, 12 and 14 were once comfortable numbers, too.
"There is no sense of urgency and no sense of panic," he said. "We're not just shooting for a number of affiliations that make us better. Could they be out there? I would never say they're not.
"We're going to be evaluating the landscape, but I'm not going to speculate. I actually am watching a lot of this activity operating around us, more so than impacting us directly."
Sankey was asked whether adding Oklahoma and Texas trumped the Big Ten's latest additions, and he quickly responded in the affirmative. He added that the SEC remains in contiguous states, as it did with the 1992 additions of Arkansas and South Carolina and the 2012 additions of Missouri and Texas A&M.
A Florida-Oklahoma football trip may not be as long for the visiting team compared to Maryland-UCLA, but the days of any prominent league being confined to a specific region seem long gone.
"That's going to be a lot," Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said when asked about having coached USC and what playing in the Big Ten will mean for the Trojans. "There wasn't that much traveling in the Pac-12 or the Pac-10 before that, so the Notre Dame game was the big thing every year. You would even go two days early.
"There will be different challenges for that conference, but we've got plenty of our own issues and problems to work on."
Sankey said the additions of Oklahoma and Texas will give the SEC more sensible matchups such as Arkansas-Texas, Texas-Texas A&M, Arkansas-Oklahoma and Missouri-Oklahoma.
Schedule stalemate
Hopes of a new league scheduling format in 2025 and beyond came and went during the SEC's spring meetings in late May, and not much has changed since.
"We ended with the understanding more questions needed to be answered, including the general timeline and the issues that need to be addressed as we think forward now about the College Football Playoff," Sankey said. "We have to dig through a tie-breaking procedure. We have over a quarter century in divisions, and we understand all the nuances about how to break ties.
"We have to dig a bit deeper there with the single division concept in front of us."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.
Tweets by @DavidSPaschall Tweets by @StephenHargis