SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey joins the show to talk about the addition of Texas and Oklahoma into the conference and more...

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
In the interim. In the meantime, I want you to hear from Oklahoma
Sooners head coach Brent Venables and theSooners had a bounce back after a difficulty
year of the year before. Andthese are the opening. Oh wait,
the Commissioner's coming down here right now. Thanks to our fearless leader Terry Fox,
he was able to round him up. So we'll do that. Let's

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hear from the commissioner about the hornsdown thing. Is that or was that?
Do you have that to handy?I'll tell you what. We'll we'll
we'll dig that up and we'll bringthat to you. Coming up at four
o'clock hour, because we don't wantthe commissioner to have to wait. So
he's going to come over and visitwith us right now. So we're very
pleased to have in joints. He'swalking over. We were told he would

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be right here and was finishing upsome things, and so there is and
here's what's Here's what's also very veryimpressive about the Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference
is that he comes equipped with hisown headset. And that's a good thing.
And I would imagine and also withthe amount of interviews to be done

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with the sharing of headsets and thethings of that nature's that's probably a very
smart and salient idea to do withit. And by the way, it's
that particular model is my personal favorite, the Sennheiser. That particular Senheiser is
what we use on our long wornfootball broadcast. So we're very pleased to

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be joined here on the Craig WayShow by the Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.
Greg thank youes with us. I'dstart off by saying, it is
really impressed by your headset, becauseI have one just like it for the
Long Worn football broadcast. It's verycomfortable and it's very functional, isn't it
the media days after COVID so summertwenty one, I'm like, you know,
I'm rolling around. I don't knowwho was on there before, so
I started bringing my own. Wouldyou let me start with I lived here

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for eleven years, Carol d Days, Right, you remember when I was
listened on the highways and byways toyour work. Okay, it's good.
It's good to be back in down. Our children were born up in McKinny.
I lived in Allen before. Allenwas a cool place and I was
commissioned to the south and Conference alot of miles on a Honda Corp.
Radio. I remember that. AndI was at kr kr LD from eighty

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four to ninety six, So yeah, we definitely did overlap and back of
the day, and and I wasa product of a Southland Conference school at
the time, North Texas, backin the North Texas State days. Uh
so, yeah, it's it's good. And I know I feel the same
way when I get a chance tocome back up here to the Metroplex,
because it does evoke a lot ofmemories. And this is a really interesting

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thing because, uh here you havethe charge of of the most successful collegiate
athletic conference in the in the nation. And the the familial feel, I
think is the best way to describeit, that we have gotten that that
to not that not just our flagshipradio station for the longborns, but the

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but the Texas media as well.What I've heard is there's a real communal
feel to it that certainly wasn't thereat the start of the Big Twelve Days
because that was a kind of aforced marriage thing. And then but even
just beyond that, just I thinkeverybody's been kind of made it feel comfortable,
and I don't know if that wasa directive on your part, but

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it certainly has worked out well.I think that's who we are. I
would describe that as the culture thatwe've tried to build. Now. We
have intense rivalries, we have disagreements, but we are in this together.
And we've had a long lead upfrom twenty one when the news broke about
this possibility, to it happening toentry officially just a few weeks ago,

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and then play a few weeks ahead. That has allowed things to settle.
There's a lot that's happened around thatI think has explained our decision making and
the decision making of Oklahoma and Texas. And one of our athletics directors said
we should apply to it just meansmore tests. That's kind of our tagline
to potential entries, and I thinkwith Oklahoma and Texas both they meet that

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standard. So that's why it fitswell. The other thing I thought that
was pretty pretty interesting to come outof your address yesterday morning was you were
asking it was certainly not lost onthree consecutive questions about the specter of reorganization
and expansion and realignment and all thesekinds of things, and what you kept

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coming back to was something I thoughtof when I was lifted there the now
sixteen strong banner that I can tellI got the feeling that from you and
I and probably from those from thepresidents of the institutions here, that everybody
feels really really good about where thisnumber is and the actual makeup of the
sixteen. And I'm going to reorderthose. I think the makeup is the

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lead story, and the number provideskind of a flexibility that you don't have
it some other numbers. Don't forget. We added basically one hundred miles to
our longest trip. Our longest travelwas Columbia, South Carolina to College Station.
Now it's Columbia, South Carolina toAustin. You know, Gainesville to
Columbia, Missouri is a long trip. Lexington to Austin will be a longer

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trip. But they're all in thatsame general distance. And that's very different
from what anyone else, anyone elseat the highest level of college athletics faces,
And so it's number. It's thatpeer institution, peer athletic program,
similar expectations, geographical continuity, highlevel of support, fan intensity. Like

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when I visited with Chris del Contiearly on. I asked about like fan
travel patterns for visiting institutions for footballgames, and he told me a number,
and I was shocked. And Itold him, like when Kentucky visited
College Station for football first time,they had ten thousand fans at Kyle Field.
He was shocked, And I thinkthat's who we are. And again,

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that's that familiarity that's there now andwe'll develop over time. But we
can't be in a tent to what'shappening around us. What I wanted to
communicate is I have to watch what'shappening in other places. They've all signed
contracts, they're now debating whether thoseshould apply or not. That's not about
our decision making. We're going tobe a tenant, will be prepared,

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but we really think we've got theright mix of sixteen universities and credible athletic
programs and that gives us in thelevel of excitement about our future. Visiting
with the Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, Greg Sankie, you're on sports Radio
aum thirteen under the Zone. Youwere also asked about and we all kind
of smirked a little bit tiebreakers.That's good about that with the top two

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going, how much work had togo into the conversations and eventually it'll all
roll out and we'll learn it allabout how this thing would be meted out.
Yah. So tiebreakers are like carinsurance, it was described to me,
which is you don't know how goodit is till you have a wreck.
So you're going to pressure test everything. And Craig, the insight is

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getting expansion. When we were atfourteen, we were debating whether to remain
in divisions or have a single division, and that preset a discussion about what
tiebreakers might look and so that canconversations continued. We just had a dialogue
about a week and a half agowith athletics directors. We were in person
at the end of May where wewanted to fine tune some things before you

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make an announcement. So things arecrafted. It's order of priority maybe and
is here that's deleted or a willinstead of a wood and we'll wrap it
up I would think in early August. The other thing again, and it
rolled back to the expansion question withAndrew Adelson for me as being asked about

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the word tomorrow, and it mademe think of Shakespeare tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow, that sort of thing.But I was thinking of it in a
more global sense, not just necessarilyabout size of the league or membership or
whatever, but even things like whethertomorrow means somewhere down the road a division
the alignment, or is it likethis, is it your thought that let's

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see how this works for a bit, And if your membership, your constituency
tells you we think we might wantto discuss the possibility of something else,
then it opens up to that.I don't know that it's that specific,
but that's a possibility, and Ithink we're actually engaging here in the art
of possibility right with that theme,we have our schedule format at eight games

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for twenty four and twenty five,So in twenty six, the general thought
is debate is eight or nine games? And then how do you make those
allocations from a competitive balance standpoint.We've got a lot of analytic work on
that. Does it open up otherpossibilities those have been introduced previously? Could
those come back? They could?They're kind of on that side shelf at

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the moment. But we're going togo through a season at sixteen. We're
going to go through a championship gamethat's going to lead to a college football
playoff, all of which are firsttime learning experience. Is so rather than
just project things, we'll have someactual data that we can use and do
some other projections and form our decisionmaking. And I would think when you

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look at the twenty sixth season,we'll get through the football season, We'll
get to the first quarter of twentytwenty five and round out our decision making.
All right, I can't let yougo without branching into other sports as
well, since I do the playby play for football, men's basketball,
women's basketball, and baseball. Thewhole listing of championships tell folks in Austin

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who don't know how special the Hoovermet is for baseball, or also how
brid Stone areno worked for the men'sbasketball tournament or Brods of course for the
women's event there in Greenville and otherplaces that you've done it the thought process
that goes into the champion ship sites. And we're looking at implementing a volleyball
championship as well. Tournament, sowe'll take baseball since that's the most recent

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we've been at Hoover for twenty fiveyears. It's a stadium where Michael Jordan
played in the eighties, so it'snot the brand new, modern brick stadium.
They've done a great job investing inthe facility. We have two hundred
and fifty plus RV hookups and thosesell out. So if you have an
RV and you're a Texas fan,you want to come to Hoover. We

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put those RV spots on sale atten am and on Monday, whenever it
is, you better be in thatqueue because by noon they're gone. And
it is a community. It isfun to walk through. We can fit
about fifteen thousand people. It's outdoor, so you know what it rains.
It's actually a setup for the strugglesthat teams face in regional super regions in

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at Omaha because they don't have thatexperience until they're in a conference. Urnam.
We're going to have a single eliminationtournament's going to be there. You'll
know your team will be there.It's up to them how long they stay.
Our men's basketball is a predetermined site. We're in Nashville through the rest
of this decade, very centrally located, very accessible by airlines. You afciently
hop in a car in it it'sa painful drive. But if you're going

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to go, spend a week andget up there, everything's downtown, all
kinds of hotel options, entertainment options, Broadway right outside. We don't have
to create events because you can justwalk outside the arena and go to a
honky tonk and have fun or havea great meal. Women's basketball in Greenville,
so we're about to move into ourfifth year there. If you've not
been to Greenville, South Carolina,a long way away from Austin. It's
the other side geographically, but abeautiful downtown. It is one to one

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of the undersold cities I think inAmerica, and our hosts have been great,
an outstanding arena that fits really welland hosts some women's basketball and men's
basketball tournament events at the NCAA level. So it gives us some experience and
knowledge there and football is in that'sthe goal. You know, if you

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get to Atlanta, you're going tohave an opportunity to play for a national
championship. Atlanta's a competitive marketplace forus. That's one where the public tickets
sell out in June as soon asthey can. We've got a bunch of
tickets will be available if teams areyou know, are there the two for
the two teams fan bases, anduh, I will tell you that is
the loudest VENU year after year fora game that I attend, because you've

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got both teams represented playing for somethingmeaningful. It's his SEC championship. And
you know, if if you're yourteam's there, great, but if you
want to be a part of it, it's still something special to see.
And if you're really, really good, uh, if Tex is really good,
you could wind up playing three gamesthere. Conference Championship, Peach Bowl,

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National Championship, right, yeah,yeah, Familiarity breeds maybe some absolutely,
and we've had that before, sowe've played you know, when we
had Alabama and Georgia in the Nationalchampionship game and twenty eighteen, you know,
Georgia had played there in our conferencechampionship game and obviously our teams,

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you know, roster transition changes things, but have a level of familiarity with
that, no doubt. I greatlyappreciate you taking the time in an incredibly
busy time here. We're excited tobe here and looking forward to seeing you
on the SEC road. And thenseeing you in Austin as well. Yeah,
it will do it. It's incrediblyexciting. One of my talking points
has been, you know there's oneplace on planet Earth where this fall you

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can go to an F one raceand the highest level college football game available,
and that's going to be when Georgiaand Texas playing Austin and mid October.
So that's just one of the manygreat, great events and great experience
one a weekend that'll be appreciated.Commissioner, Thank you, thank you.
Correct all right, Greg, thankyou the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.
We'll be back to wrap up thehour on sports Radio AM thirteen hundred The Zone.