Greg Sankey clarifies future scheduling plans between SEC, Big Ten programs
Greg Sankey has addressed the idea and previous reports that the SEC and Big Ten could soon be engaged in scheduling challenge-style regular season matchups on the football field.
During a Thursday appearance on “The Paul Finebaum Show,” Sankey admitted a lot of people have written about the idea after a recent report, but not many have asked the SEC commissioner about the endeavor head-on. Sankey went on to break down the scheduling potential into 3 categories.
“There are really 3 ways to look at regular season scheduling. One is you’ll see more games between SEC and Big Ten members. That’s being done naturally at the campus level as our members look to schedule Big Ten members, I think that’s really healthy for college football,” said Sankey.
While that endeavor is happening between programs, Sankey went on to caution people about “overpredicting” the scheduling opportunity of the two leagues. At this juncture, Sankey said coordination between the SEC and Big Ten offices is not ongoing.
“The second is should the conferences be involved at the conference office level in more coordination? We’ve talked about that. There are currently no plans to do so,” Sankey claimed. “… I think we need to be really careful about overpredicting this scheduling opportunity.”
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Sankey’s third scenario was a direct reference to the idea of “challenge” style matchups that have been featured throughout basketball season. Sankey stopped short of predicting such events will occur.
“Third is some of the things we’ve done with challenges. That’s been done in basketball most notably… Might we have more intentional opportunities to schedule with our Big Ten colleagues in a different way?” questioned Sankey. “That’s a lot of work and I would not begin predicting that will happen.”
Altogether, it sounds like more SEC vs. Big Ten games are indeed likely to be coming down the pipeline, but it might not be a major shift to anything on the schedule.
Commissioner @GregSankey expounds on the relationship between the @SEC & @bigten especially when it comes to regular season scheduling pic.twitter.com/uLGknGpGQw
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) November 14, 2024