The upheaval that is now all too common in the NCAA landscape is beginning to have a major cost on the way that college football functions, and that first and foremost includes the Southeastern Conference. The nation’s premier athletic association recently made a change from eight to nine conference games after immense public pressure to do so, and while that will lead to a better product on the field for a lot of fans, it will certainly come at a cost.
We saw last season that, thanks to the inane strength of schedule calculations that the College Football Playoff utilized, the Aggies were unfairly penalized despite actually having played a pretty tough slate. Using an RPI-type of calculation, based on opponent win/loss record and opponent’s opponents win/loss record, works okay for sports with large sample sizes, but with only 12 regular season games for football, the risk of aberrations is huge— and it adversely affected Texas A&M just last season.
In the midst of all of this— not to mention the NIL and transfer portal madness, the near-constant news of lawsuits being filed against the NCAA for eligibility, and the changing of rules on a whim— there has been a growing call for the SEC to break away and self-regulate. Speaking today at SEC Media Days, Greg Sankey affirmed that that call is very real— and it’s being discussed at the highest levels.
Greg Sankey confirms discussions about SEC breaking away from NCAA are taking place
Sankey was clear that these discussions were not a “leverage point” and arose out of “frustration” with the current way things are going; however, he also said that they were not something he wanted to see “on the D1 ticker,” meaning he clearly understands how drastic of a solution it would be. He closed his quote in this manner:
"We have regulated ourselves more aggressively than other colleagues by choice… I do think there’s a national expectation that we participate in a national organization. But that national organization must function in a healthy manner. Otherwise, that simmering will continue."Greg Sankey
You can hear his entire quote in the video down below:
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey on if there have been talks about the conference breaking away from the NCAA if national legislation can’t get passed:
— 𝕋𝕣𝕒𝕧𝕚𝕤 𝕃. 𝔹𝕣𝕠𝕨𝕟 (@Travis_L_Brown) July 20, 2026
“They’re real. People have talked about that.” pic.twitter.com/yLSXq4OAak
So what would it mean for the SEC to break away and start doing their own thing? Since membership in the SEC is voluntary and there are legitimate competitors, the SEC could make their own rules about NIL and transfers without there being grounds from athletes to sue on the basis of these rules being enforced by a monopoly.
That obviously allows the SEC to solve a lot of the big issues that many fans around the conference are troubled by; however, it also means that there likely will be no more major non-conference games, barring some kind of agreement with another conference (like the Big 10, as many have postulated).
If two “super-conferences” are formed, however, this would pose a problem for the monopoly issue: since these are the two top conferences, it would be easier for an athlete looking to sue to say that the other conferences are not real competitors. In that case, a collective bargaining agreement would likely be the way to get rules done.
That’s a bit down the road, of course. For now, it’s shocking enough to know that these are real discussions that are going on at the highest level here— and how it may affect things going forward is not something anyone will fully understand until if happens… if it ever does.
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