While SEC commissioner Sankey postures, forces move to dumb down college football

Greg Sankey's job is to promote his league, and in the absence of facts and on-field accomplishment, he's resorting to spin.

At the SEC spring meetings he addressed the media and said, "If you look at the entirety of our league, we are by far the most competitive, strongest league -- by far."

"The depth of this league stands alone."

Never mind that the Big Ten has won the last three national championships, and in the 12-team playoff, the SEC entries got manhandled, except when they played each other.

Nobody cares that Vanderbilt is stronger than Rutgers, or Florida would wallop Michigan State--they would. What people remember is who won the titles. Since everyone started paying players and the payments came out in the open, the Big Ten has won three straight championships, and they seem poised to capture a fourth, with Indiana, Ohio State and Oregon among the first tier of contenders in 2026.

The depth and entirety argument gets tested when Ohio State travels to Texas on September 12th. Buckeyes quarterback Julian Sayin said on the Panini Mobile Tour across the state that "The whole program has a chip on its shoulder" after the way last season ended, a 12-0 start and No. 1 ranking followed by a loss to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship and to Miami in the College Football Playoff.

People care about wins and results, not posturing. Debate is raging over the size of the playoffs with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti lobbying hard for a 24-team playoff which would further dilute the regular season while allowing 9-3 and 8-4 teams to get in.

The trouble with an expanded playoff is that the prevailing response seems to be to dumb down the schedule to reach 10-2. For athletic directors and coaches, it's all about job preservation rather than the quality of the product. Just yesterday Oregon cancelled a home-and-home with Baylor to schedule Group of 6 opponent Coastal Carolina in order to maintain seven home games.

Fans want uniform, meaningful scheduling, with every Power 4 team playing nine conference games and at least ten Power 4 opponents. What we're likely to get instead is scheduling for success. Indiana and Penn State will hardly break a sweat in September, the Hoosiers opening with North Texas, Howard, Western Kentucky and Northwestern.

The Nittany Lions are poised for a big rebound in 2026 under Matt Campbell. They play Marshall, at Temple, Buffalo and Wisconsin, then at Northwestern on October 2nd. They won't play a ranked team until they host USC on October 10.

The Trojans dropped their historic rivalry with Notre Dame; instead, they ease into the season with home dates against San Jose State, Fresno State and Louisiana. Not Louisiana State, but Louisiana, the Ragin' Cajuns of the Sun Belt Conference. The Big Ten opener finds them at Rutgers, 2-7 in the conference last year. They'll be an untested 4-0 when they host the Ducks on September 26th.

The new bipartisan bill is supposed to save college football but its susceptibility to court challenges make it a nonstarter. Lawyers will salivate at the chance to pick it apart. The attempts to restrict player movement and roll back the clock on compensation will be buried in an avalanche of lawsuits.

The best provision of the bill is the section that establishes a registry for agents, and limits their take to 5%. Currently the representatives are billing players for 15-20% of their earnings, far in excess of a standard NFL or NBA contract.

The SEC deserves credit for eliminating the cupcake games in November, but for those expanded playoffs to have any meaning, teams need to play 10 Power 4 opponents across college football. Play one tune-up game in out-of-conference, but everybody should put their reputation on the line with one quality opponent in those first three. How about an SEC versus Big Ten challenge in September instead?

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