Sankey: Focus is to play in the fall
SEC commissioner vows to stay connected with colleagues to work it out
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey speaks daily with his fellow commissioners from the Power 5 conferences.
Sankey said the conversations have been invaluable while the country continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
But his suggestion the SEC could go its own way and play college football in the fall if other conferences weren’t ready raised a few eyebrows.
“There is room for different conferences to make different decisions,” Sankey said during an appearance on Jacksonville radio station 1010 XL Thursday morning. “If there’s a couple of programs that aren’t able, does that stop everyone? I’m not sure it does. But the ability for us to stay connected will remain important.”
Sankey said most people who reacted to his quote that was shared widely on Twitter didn’t hear everything he said earlier in the interview.
“What’s interesting is that tweet, that little segment missed the paragraph that preceded and the paragraph that proceeded [when I] spoke of the increased connection between myself and my colleagues among the five conferences — ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12,” Sankey told the Orlando Sentinel on Monday. “The focus is on doing things in a connected way. You’ve seen us make independent decisions with consistent results.
“If you go back to March, we’re all making independent decisions, but we’re talking consistently about, ‘What are you going to do with your basketball tournament? Are your