SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey talks basketball makeups, football future
Missouri was only allowed to host 3,063 fans for its thrilling win over TCU on Saturday, about 19 percent of Mizzou Arena capacity. But there was at least one notable guest among the crowd: SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. Sankey, who also attended Tennessee's win over Kansas on Saturday night, said the game marked the first regular-season contest he watched in person since the COVID-19 pandemic rocked America in March of 2020.
Prior to tipoff, Sankey met with local reporters for about 15 minutes to discuss whether postponed basketball contests would be made up, what an SEC basketball tournament might look like, how soon fans could expect sporting events to return to full capacity and more. Here is the full transcript from Sankey's interview.
Question: How did you come to the decision to make this your first trip?
Sankey: “You know, I’ve been out for the SEC-Big 12 Challenge every year, try to find two games, and I’ll head to Tennessee after we finish here. So that’s one. Two, I had been out for championships, so cross country in Baton Rouge, soccer in Orange Beach, football in Atlanta, and then traveled to bowl games and was able to do it in a healthy way. So passed my COVID, test, I think I got my results yesterday morning, and I personally enjoy the visits. I miss, like all of you, the chance to see real people, not on a flat screen, on an iPad, but to watch the competition, which is what we’re trying to support in the best way possible. So to see it gives you a little bit of adrenaline, actually.”
Just overall, how do you think the SEC has handled COVID?
“I went through with athletics directors earlier this week, if you will, an after-action review from the fall. It began with what did we expect back in July and August, and there was a knowledge that there would be disruption, but I’m really proud of how everyone has worked to handle disruption. I was talking to (Missouri Deputy AD) Ryan (Alpert) about relocating a football game from Baton Rouge to here on short notice, adjusting and calling Jim on a Monday and saying ‘you remember that game you were playing against Arkansas on Saturday? It will be at home, but it’ll be against Vanderbilt.’ And the dominoes of those types of activities. So really proud of the flexibility and collaboration, but also we’ve done it in a healthy way. You’re going to have disruption; we had disruption yesterday between Texas and Kentucky. Which you hate, but it’s just an environment we’re not able to control and haven’t been able to control for the last 11 months. You just have to react, and really proud of how people have acted to support healthy competition but reacted when there have been disruptions.”
How do you expect the process to work with rescheduling postponed basketball games?
“You have to accept we may not be able to play everything, and we fought as hard as we could, fought being just the word of the struggle, in football. And eventually, you know, 69 of 71, if you’d have told us that in August, that would have been like a victory parade moment. So on basketball, on the men’s side, our (open) dates are late in the season, and intentionally so to try to move through. If we have multiple disruptions in a week, we may have the conversations like that Arkansas and Missouri shift to accommodate, and then a couple dates late where you could fill in. So the opportunity to play all the games still remains on the men’s side. Just this morning we announced on the women’s side, you know, appreciate Robin (Pingeton) and Jim (Sterk), we had a late disruption that actually caused a pivot on our testing protocols to test earlier so we didn’t have teams traveling with disruption, but announced the rescheduling of the Missouri at Auburn women’s game and I think three others. So we’ll be caught back up in women’s basketball February 7, and we don’t have room at the end, so that’s going to be a question of can you manipulate the schedule before the tournament, or you’ll have a loss of games. Which, Jim’s in the back of the room, I think I’ve been open and honest to say you may lose games. You have to be okay with that, and it’s going to be a percentage-based seeding with the tournament, but you may lose games. Don’t want to, but you may.”
Has there been any talk about not playing those basketball tournaments to try to keep those teams healthy in preparation for the NCAA Tournaments?
“Well we can keep teams healthy and play a tournament. There’s actually very few conferences — in fact, the roster for me begins with one that have played a postseason tournament in a sport in this COVID era, and we did that in women’s soccer. All 14 teams over 10 days staying in different hotels, we stayed healthy, named a champion. And you think about the domino effect there, Sarah Fuller’s around, comes up here, kicks off and then kicks extra points in the Tennessee game, is involved in the Presidential inauguration. So we know by trying there can be great stories. I’ve also said we’re going to wait as long as we can to make major decisions, so we’re going to prepare in a healthy way, submit a health plan to Davidson Metro Health, or Metro Health in Davidson county, and be prepared to play a tournament on the men’s side and do the same in Greenville on the women’s side.”
Along those same lines, I know there’s been some speculation about teams potentially opting out of conference tournaments. Have you had any conversations like that, or is that a possible option that you think could be available to SEC teams?
“Well the great reality is the ethos of this conference is high-level competition. That’s why you finish 69 of 71 games. That’s why we played highly-ranked teams in games on Dec. 12, when others didn’t. Are we going to have conversations? If we need to. We had a healthy dialogue with our athletics directors about the focus on playing this season as scheduled, and that will continue to be our focus, particularly around the health of the participants.”
How concerned are you about the financial challenges that have popped up across the industry?
“The reality in this environment is — I’ve said this many times, really to athletics departments on Zoom calls. The great thing about what’s happened is I can have a lot more interaction. I’m not there with living, breathing human beings but can communicate directly. So in those times, I’ve said there’s no place I’d rather be in these circumstances than the Southeastern Conference. So that’s the start of how I look at the finances. We performed well last fiscal year against projections. In fact, increased our revenue distribution, and we’re working to maximize our revenue distribution from our conference out, but you can see, in what would have been probably a full arena in a normal environment, an impact today with probably 25 percent. And we’ve talked continually with athletics directors and even presidents and chancellors about the impact and how do we adjust our practices. How can we maximize revenue distribution in this environment but also have listened and shared information about how people are adjusting, whether it’s not filling positions, reducing travel and travel groups. At the same time, we have the added expense of COVID testing, which last year at this time was clearly an un-budgeted reality that is a contributing factor. But the net is I’d rather be here dealing with it. We’re going to have reductions across the board that will prompt decision-making within each department, and I’m sure there will be carry-over, but I’m confident our members will be able to adjust well, even if it takes some time to do those adjustments, to recover.”
Was Missouri’s football bowl disbursement affected at all by their bowl game getting canceled?
“We haven’t changed our revenue distribution formula. So we had a call on a Sunday morning with COVID testing realities here that brought a stop to that opportunity. We had three on our side and, ironically, one on TCU, wasn’t able to play Arkansas. So that affects the money that goes in for distribution but doesn’t affect our approach.”
What do you think of the investment that we’ve seen recently in Mizzou facilities, particularly the new indoor, and what do you think of the job Eli Drinkwitz has done in his first year?
“Well, I’ll give three points. One is, I’ve really been impressed. I think Jim started — we were talking about the number of different athletics directors I’ve worked with in my five and a half years, actually more than five and a half years now, and Jim came in, like the next week there’s a $9 million gift. So it’s a sign of the health of the athletics program, the university and the support base. So , Jim, that was back in 2016. So that’s like one of the first data points, and then I’ve watched the news not only with the vision, which, part of it was fulfilled with what happened in the (south) end zone, you drive by the softball field, we played our tournament there I think the first year that the new softball complex was opened, and then the vision forward on what’s being built. But also the public support for the University of Missouri and its athletics program, I think those are great signs. And then I think Eli, Mike (Leach), Lane (Kiffin), Sam (Pittman), last year’s four new coaches, had we talked at this time about expectations, we walked into March, April, May, everything was wiped off the table. So you have to give credit, I think, to every program, and I’ve said this publicly, I think every one of these teams should be invited back to Homecoming, which I know is a big deal here in Columbia — I don’t know if it’s 10 years or 20 years — and celebrated for the effort to get through this. But a really remarkable effort. Missouri, a tough first game with Alabama. We were on the phone about COVID testing and learning a lot, learning about team departures, and then, I haven’t evaluated it, but enough displacement within the schedule, maybe the most disruption of any team. As much disruption, I’ll say that. And the ability to adapt and adjust and continue forward, I think, is a tribute to the leadership Eli provided to his team.”
How soon do you think you’ll see packed stadiums again in the SEC?
“You know, my degree from Cortland State and Syracuse didn’t give me, I didn’t take the pandemic planning course. I knew I should have opted in on that elective, I just didn’t. We rely on our doctors. I think there’s some light at the end of this right now. You see a really severe downward trend, generally, in numbers. We’re still having people affected, so our thinking about how we adapt has to be maintained. We can’t become complacent as a society or as a conference, and, you know, there’s some hope that in the fall we can move back towards normal, but I’m not able to guarantee that. In fact, we announced a football schedule on Wednesday and followed up with, like my mantra last year, which is, we’re going to prepare to play the season as scheduled but recognize the circumstances around the virus are going to guide us in our decision making. And what I’ve said to our athletics directors, presidents, chancellors, our staff, repeatedly, as others, is we have to be prepared to play as scheduled and then we can pivot off of that. What we can’t do is, it’s almost the tournament question, we can’t chase every story, every nuance, every observation. We have to be prepared to play as scheduled, and then we can pivot off of that. So that’s the focus as we look towards the fall.”
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