MIRAMAR BEACH, Florida — Amid a flurry of questions about potentially expanding the College Football Playoff, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said Monday night the conference still sees the value in its championship game.
It has almost become accepted that playoff expansion means the death of the conference championship game. There are already scheduling challenges even with a 12-team playoff, and the conventional wisdom is that a move to 16 or 24 teams will prompt the extinction of those title games.
“We have contracts,” Sankey said about the SEC Championship, “so pretty committed.” When asked a follow-up to his philosophical commitment to the game, he replied, “I’m pretty committed.” The SEC and Mercedes-Benz Stadium have a contract to play the game through 2031.
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Sankey’s comments come amid a busy spring, during which multiple high-profile SEC figures called for the conference to move on from the championship game. Alabama AD Greg Byrne told USA Today about the SEC Championship, “I think the ship has sailed. It’s run its course.” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said in April that something would have to be gained if the SEC Championship was lost.
“Where we are right now with 12 teams, I don’t necessarily agree that it needs to quit being played,” Smart told On3. “But if it gets to 16 or 24 and we’ve got to move the end of the season up and we’ve got to get everything done by the second week of January, then I’d say it probably has to go.”
The SEC invented the conference championship game under former commissioner Roy Kramer back in 1992. Famously, Alabama defeated Florida that year and went on to win the national championship. Played annually in Atlanta, beyond the nostalgia and historical appeal, it is a significant revenue driver for the conference. Last year’s Alabama-Georgia SEC Championship game drew 16.86 million viewers on ABC.
The financial appeal of conference championship games was part of Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti’s recent pitch to grow to 24 teams. Once a proponent of a 16-team automatic qualifier-heavy format, Petitti believes the financials no longer make sense for it. The Big Ten commissioner said the Power Four collectively would lose $200 million in annual revenue if it eliminated the conference championship games. A move to 16 teams and the accompanying additional revenue wouldn’t make up for it, he said last week at the Big Ten spring meetings.
“I just don’t think it works economically,” Petitti said. “I don’t think it works scheduling-wise as well. I think it doesn’t create enough new inventory. And then the last piece, I don’t think it gets enough access.”
