Greg Sankey opposes automated qualifiers in CFP

ATLANTA — Enlargement of the four-team University Football Playoff format has been a scorching topic because last year, when a 12-workforce structure was proposed by a doing work team that bundled existing SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. That proposal bundled six automated bids for the maximum-rated conference champions, as very well as 6 at-big bids for remaining highest-ranked teams. That proposal wasn’t adopted, thanks in section to the altering landscape of conference membership all around the state. 

It surely will not be an eight-team product with 5 automated bids for conference champions if Sankey will get his way. 

“No, I am not heading to come back again to that. I’m in opposition to that,” Sankey reported Monday through SEC Media Days. 

This echoes what his way of thinking was likely into dialogue of achievable growth last year. 

“I walked into a person of the very first meetings when we were searching at the structure and explained, ‘If we want to extend to eight teams for the Playoff with no automated bids, I will have that conversation’,” he mentioned on Monday. “But relocating to an eight-workforce playoff and granting what had been going to be 6 automatic bids, minimizing at-big access, is unwise.”

The process is evolving, even so, and Sankey is aware of that he has to be adaptable in the long run.

“I had, as commissioner, moved folks forward to the point we were being supportive as a league,” he explained. “If we’re going to go back to square 1, we are heading to take a step back from the model released and rethink the solution, selection of teams, no matter whether there need to be any promise for conference champions at all. Just get paid your way in. There is a thing that is wholesome competitively about that and makes anticipations and aid all-around courses. Where we go? We will see. We have experienced just one initial conversation in late June. I walked into that assembly not pretty optimistic about the capability to speak via problems. I walked out a great deal much more good about the path forward than when I walked in.”

Sankey is standing business that the CFP enlargement framework that he was included in establishing is the ideal strategy to the meaningful postseason.

“The force was there to have meeting entry with some warranty,” he reported. “So the 12-staff, 6 at-substantial, which will increase the at-massive obtain, and 6 conference qualifiers, not automated qualifiers, but the promise that the six ideal conference champions was a seriously great balancing outcome.”

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What will the upcoming maintain pertaining to CFP expansion? Sankey is 1 of the most strong folks in college or university athletics, and it isn’t going to sound like he is coming off of his stance on automated qualifiers anytime soon.

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