“Have people in my room asking ‘Why are we still in the NCAA?’”: Greg Sankey fuels speculation about SEC’s future at spring meetings

Greg Sankey fueled speculation about the SEC's future in the NCAA with his recent comments at the conference's spring meetings in Destin, Florida, on Monday. Yahoo! Sports' Ross Delenger posted several statements from the SEC Commissioner on his X (formerly Twitter) account.

Sankey brought up the idea of the SEC breaking away from the NCAA while talking about the four power conferences seeking more autonomy in the future. According to Sankey, they would like the SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Big 12 to have as much as 68% weighted voting power in committees in the NCAA's new governance model.

"SEC has asked for more autonomy for the four conferences," Sankey told Dellenger. "I don’t have the authority to just depart (the NCAA). I’ve shared with the decision-making working group that I have people in my room asking, ‘Why are we still in the NCAA?’"

"We’d like to see more authority and autonomy granted under the NCAA heading and we’d like to come together for championships," Sankey added. "We talked about an autonomy division under the NCAA and would be linked but you'd have more authority on autonomy."

Dellenger added that Greg Sankey has been given authority by the SEC presidents in a vote last March to split from the NCAA if he thinks it's warranted. SEC moving away from the NCAA was one of the topics of discussion during this week's spring meetings.

Greg Sankey takes shot at ACC and Big 12 at SEC spring meetings

There is a reason why Greg Sankey and the SEC want the four power conferences to have 68% of the voting power and not 65%, which is currently proposed. The SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 need to vote the same way for their issues to pass at 65%.

There is no guarantee they would vote the same way on issues facing college sports in the future, as their alliance is currently on shaky ground. Sankey recently blasted the ACC and Big 12 after the two conferences released a statement that they wanted to have more say in future discussions with the NCAA.

The Alabama Crimson Tide are presented with the SEC regular season title by commissioner Greg Sankey. Photo: Imagn

Sankey fired back, saying that he doesn't "need lectures from others about the good of the game." He added that they can issue their own press statement, but he's actually looking for ideas to move them forward. The fallout stemmed from the Big Ten and SEC having double the number of automatic qualifiers compared to the ACC and Big 12 in the 16-team proposal for the College Football Playoff.