Could the SEC go it alone - and shake up college football?
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel, Pete Thamel and Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated dive into SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s comments that the league could return to football without the rest of the sport’s top conferences — and the guys speculate what could be the following domino effect. Subscribe to the Yahoo Sports College Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DAN WETZEL: It was a little bit of a interesting discussion by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who tells 1010 XL in Jacksonville-- this is per Matt Hayes's Twitter feed, Matt Hayes at CFB, a friend of all of ours. Greg Sankey says, "The hope is we all move together." This is on conference alignment and returning in the fall. So the hope is we all move together, but you know-- this is where it gets interesting. There is room for different conferences to make different decisions. If a couple of programs aren't able, does that stop everyone? I'm not sure it does.
As I read that, it's the SEC saying, if we have to go it alone, we go it alone. We're not gonna worry about what they're doing in California. Or we're not gonna worry about what they're doing somewhere else.
The possibility would be that the SEC could just go ahead and go, without California or without the Big 10, or whatever. Maybe you're only just playing your eight conference games. Maybe you're adding games.
I don't know if you can extend out, just say we're gonna play all SEC games all year. Could play 12 of those. It might not be a national title. I don't know how this would go. I would think the Big 12 and the SEC are the most likely to play.
What do you think? Is this like the early shot across the bow? Can we overread this and declare a civil war?
[LAUGHTER]
In co-- fight, fight, fight! Right? Behind the school-- can we overreact to this, please? Let's do something irresponsible.
PAT FORDE: Of course, I'm happy to, always. No, I mean, yeah, I think it's a shot across the bow. And I don't think it's 100% out of thin air.
I wrote in my column that was up Thursday on SI.com that one of the possibilities-- it's a radical possibility-- is a bifurcated season in which some conferences just say, hey, we are ready to go in the fall like normal, and we want to play then, and our fans want us to play then, and the TV networks want us to play then. And we're going to, and we're not gonna worry about the Pac-12, which doesn't want to. And so yeah, we're just gonna do our thing.
[SOUND EFFECTS]
And maybe there's a fall season and a spring season. And you get two different seasons, basically. You could have conferences go their own way. You could even have individual schools go their own way.
And this is where the dynamics of realignment and expansion have pulled in geographically dissimilar schools. And maybe they don't see eye to eye on this.
You know, Clemson is gonna want to play? Is Boston College gonna want to play starting first thing in the fall? I don't know. Is West Virginia gonna want to play when the rest of the Big 12 does? I don't know
This is gonna be really interesting.
DAN WETZEL: Oh, they're playing. West Virginia's playing.
[LAUGHTER]
PETE THAMEL: Yeah.
Moonshine is actually the cure for the coronavirus. Yeah, right? You know that?
DAN WETZEL: They're practicing right now.
PETE THAMEL: It's better than bleach, more effective than bleach.
DAN WETZEL: Yeah. They're practicing right now.
PAT FORDE: If you take this to the extreme, guys, you want-- people have talked all-- they blue-sky all the time about blowing up the entire map and starting over. You want to give them a chance to do that? You crack open some of these alliances within conferences and between conferences, and see what happens. The coronavirus could be-- could-- you want overreaction, here's overreaction-- the means by which we blow up the entire college landscape and redo it. That's the reckless speculation we tune into this podcast for.
DAN WETZEL: There you go. We take one tweet, one tweet for some radio show, and we've now destroyed college athletics. I love it.
PETE THAMEL: So I'm not quite as fatalist as Pat, but there is a billion dollar question that this leads to. So say the Pac-12 doesn't play because of Seattle, Bay Area, LA, Gavin Newsom, et cetera, and the SEC does. Who gets the playoff money? Right? You play the playoff--
DAN WETZEL: You gotta show up for work!
PETE THAMEL: Who plays the playoff?
PAT FORDE: Can have two different playoffs.
PETE THAMEL: How do you do it--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAN WETZEL: You gotta show up for work.
PETE THAMEL: There's a billion dollars on the line.
DAN WETZEL: You gotta show up for work, although not these days. Everyone gets a stimulus payout. So it doesn't even matter.
PAT FORDE: No, you have a fall playoff--
DAN WETZEL: Get a raise.
PAT FORDE: --and you have a spring playoff.
DAN WETZEL: I don't know. I like it.
PETE THAMEL: What do you pay for-- but there's a financial component.
PAT FORDE: There is, no doubt about it. No, I think you're right. I mean, there's a contractual-- how do we work this out thing? But look, we'd already been discussing, oh, we're gonna have a 12-team playoff this year because we can. Well, if you can do that, then you can have two different playoffs. You know, you can do whatever the heck you want.
PETE THAMEL: Pat has just-- he's just added extra playoff and blew up all the college sports landscape, all off of one tweet from a Jacksonville radio show.
PAT FORDE: It's not all off of one tweet. I did have this when I wrote the column. Somebody mentioned at least the possibility of a some people playing a fall sport, some playing a spring sport. Somebody in the sport.
PETE THAMEL: I like it.