Sankey squandered the SEC’s historic success

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So let’s recap how Tony Petitti and the Big Ten played the SEC into voluntarily squandering what was about to become a massive longterm revenue advantage

2024
- B1G athletic director whose own school just went through a historic scandal is suddenly elevated to the chair of CFP selection committee and trots out lines like “teams can only play the schedules they’ve been assigned.” The CFP rankings are stacked by the loss column after the 12-team format promised to create more meaningful out of conference games between big brands

2025
- Sankey wants CFP expanded to 16 teams after SEC becomes nervous about how much harder it’s schedules are than everyone else’s…
- Petitti agrees to go to 16 if SEC moves to 9 league games, but pulls out after Sankey uses an interim president to push through a vote to move the SEC to 9 league games.
- Now the SEC programs are even more distressed about access.
- Meanwhile, the B1G’s TV partners are dismayed over how much lower their regular season ratings are than the SEC’s.

2026
- The SEC’s fantastic regular season TV ratings are setting them up for a huge contract boost in the next round of negotiations. The B1G schools won’t see the same amounts of revenue in their future TV deals if nothing changes.
- Petitti and the B1G office start pitching a 24-team playoff. Fans hate it. They believe it will devalue the regular season.
- SEC gives in on 24 instead of waiting and pressing it’s ever growing advantage. SEC folds a hand that would have led to it’s schools having TV contract revenues that would have likely been worth tens of millions more than their B1G counterparts in a decade.
- Fans react to news by saying they will watch less regular season college football, which means the B1G’s problem is probably only a couple years away from no longer being a problem. If nobody lives and dies with the SEC’s regular season games any longer then their huge market advantage is gone. Now it will all just become filler until the postseason tournament starts.

The SEC was a short wait away from having an insurmountable advantage. Today’s news ended that possibility. Petitti didn’t make his league any stronger in all of this, but the SEC’s longterm position will likely end up being much weaker than it was before the move to 24.

Devalue the regular season, devalue the SEC.

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he was kind of implying that Sankey was pretty much told by his bosses to get on board with this 24 team playoff

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If LSU fans want to put a “FIRE SANKEY” billboard in Homewood, AL (where he lives), send me the link to donate.

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I have had to do a lot of driving and traveling lately. I had Finebaum on the radio the the other day and he was kind of implying that Sankey was pretty much told by his bosses to get on board with this 24 team playoff travesty. Finebaum acted like Sankey didn’t really want to do this but was told by the President’s of the member SEC schools to get on board and there wasn’t much Sankey could do about it.

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