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Greg Sankey explains how College Football Playoff dictates 9-game schedule discussion

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey made his annual appearance in the SEC Network booth during Sunday’s SEC Baseball Tournament championship game to discuss the litany of pressing topics currently facing the league. That included potentially expanding football’s conference scheduling model from eight to nine games, which will be among the most consequential issues on the docket […]

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SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey made his annual appearance in the SEC Network booth during Sunday’s SEC Baseball Tournament championship game to discuss the litany of pressing topics currently facing the league. That included potentially expanding football’s conference scheduling model from eight to nine games, which will be among the most consequential issues on the docket during next week’s SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Fla.

When asked what went into the SEC’s discussions around altering its conference football scheduling model, Sankey made it clear a lot of those conversations will revolve around how the league perceives the College Football Playoff committee’s current selection process.

“(It’s) a lot of numbers, a lot of opinions, a lot of conversations, a lot of looking back and looking forward, thinking about how really the College Football Playoff selection process currently governs schedule decision making,” Sankey told the SEC Network crew in the fifth inning Sunday. “I think the most recent example was Nebraska discontinuing a planned series with Tennessee in football and citing the CFP selection process, and it won’t hurt us if we don’t play that game. I understand why they did it, so it’s not about a particular university. That’s not healthy for college football in the big picture.”

As Sankey mentioned, Nebraska opted out of the previously scheduled 2026-27 home-and-home football series with Tennessee in February, a move that irked those in the SEC. Volunteers athletic director Danny While publicly expressed disappointment in the Cornhuskers’ decision to cancel the series, especially given the timing. The home-and-home series, which would’ve started in Lincoln in 2026 before moving to Knoxville in 2027, was originally agreed to more than a decade ago and was already rescheduled from 2016-17 before Nebraska called it off earlier this year.

The ‘Huskers initially cited planned renovations to Memorial Stadium and its reduced capacity during that time for the cancelation. But ESPN insider Pete Thamel revealed it had more to do with the College Football Playoff and how the CFP committee weighed strength of schedule during the first year of the expanded 12-team format.

“I think this just comes down to Nebraska just didn’t want to play this series,” Thamel said on the College GameDay podcast in late February. “The one piece of empirical evidence we have of this 12-team Playoff indicates murky rewards for a tough non-conference schedule. That’s the data set we’re dealing with right now.”

It’s unknown how the league administrators will vote on the SEC finally adopting the long-discussed 9-game conference schedule in football, but it’s clear there will be a lot of talk about the CFP throughout the week in Destin.



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