SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has had plenty to crow about during his tenure leading the conference. Football championships. Improved basketball programs. A whole lot more money. Conference expansion that has only increased the value of his league and the power he holds. Things are very good in Birmingham.
Advertisement
But he’s starting to put too much dip on his chip, getting out over his skis, getting a little too greedy, and fans are starting to get sick of it. So too, apparently, are the basketball gods.
One week after Sankey dismissed the small-conference champions, some of his league’s best teams have shown exactly why the NCAA Tournament is perfect the way it is and doesn’t need more teams from leagues like his at the expense of those little guys.
Sankey told ESPN recently, “We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers (from smaller leagues), and I think that pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of (conference) expansion.” He told The Athletic’s Kyle Tucker days later that automatic qualifying spots for mid-majors are “part of the review.”
The next week, 14-seed Oakland beat Kentucky and 13-seed Yale beat Auburn, victories for the exact kind of programs that Sankey said aren’t as worthy as those from the “top end” leagues like the SEC. His conference, which tied for the most teams in the field of any league with eight, started 1-5 at the tournament, with all five losses coming to lower seeds. Only three league members reached the second round.
The more Sankey has pushed on this and other competitive balance issues, the more he’s become a villain to fans, the person against whom people are lashing out to express their frustration about the changing landscape of college sports.
GO DEEPER
Quinn: The small schools are living a dream. Are the big schools trying to kill it?
It was the SEC that started a massive round of conference realignment by adding Texas and Oklahoma in 2021. It was Sankey who went on a media blitz ahead of football’s conference championship games in December, lobbying that the SEC should get in the College Football Playoff even if No. 1 Georgia lost later that day. Alabama was ultimately selected over undefeated Florida State, an unprecedented and controversial decision. It is Sankey’s conference, along with the Big Ten, that forced a move to vastly uneven conference payouts for the CFP beginning in 2026 and are pushing for more guaranteed bids for their leagues.
Advertisement
Next up: Tilt the most popular tournament in America in their favor even more to fix the so-called problems they created for themselves.
With all that power and influence, the hubris has begun to show. Sankey has talked about NCAA Tournament expansion before, including in his role as co-chair of the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee, but his dismissive comment about the automatic qualifiers on the eve of the tournament was so insulting to so many people across college sports.
It was also extremely wrong. Major upsets of high seeds are happening more frequently and leading to deeper Cinderella runs than ever, and the SEC on the whole has struggled in this tournament (including an 0-2 record against the Ivy League in the last two years). Sankey should have known better. He walked right into this. He deserves to have it thrown back in his face. His argument was complete nonsense.
Teams like Oakland, Yale and Duquesne (which knocked off 6-seed BYU) aren’t supposed to carry the weight of all mid-majors on their backs. They’ve got enough to worry about. But they’ve been tasked with representing the legitimacy of all the programs and conferences like them this year, for fear that people like Sankey could point and say they don’t deserve to be here and we should add more power conference at-large teams.
Instead, what happened is what happens every March. Greg Kampe, in his 40th season as Oakland coach, got a win that will go in his obituary. Oakland’s Division II transfer 3-point specialist Jack Gohlke outplayed lottery pick Reed Sheppard from Kentucky. Duquesne, with a coach set to retire, won its first tournament game in 47 years. Yale students finally had something go their way (OK, maybe not that one).
In the first round, that’s what people talked about. That just means more. Not the bubble fate of an Oklahoma team that went 8-10 in conference play make the field.
Basketball isn’t football, where history has shown that the greatest collections of talent always win out, and the majority of those collections do come from the SEC. Americans love the NCAA Tournament because every team is treated equally. Whether you win the Horizon League, the Ivy League or the SEC, you get in and you get a chance. Year after year, the upsets are the memories casual fans remember.
Advertisement
I guess having greater financial and personnel discrepancies than ever before isn’t enough. Leaders like Sankey are looking for every last dollar and advantage, regardless of what that pursuit leaves in its wake. It’s not just Sankey; Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark has also publicly supported tournament expansion, admitting it would be better for his league. But he doesn’t have power like Sankey does. Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti has been smart enough to stay largely out of the public eye despite holding many of the same feelings, especially for football. He should be pressed on this, too.
Sankey has pointed to UCLA’s 2021 Final Four run from the First Four as a data point in favor of power conference-boosting expansion, conveniently ignoring that VCU made the same run in 2011. (First Four participant Colorado did add heft to his argument by knocking out Florida on Friday, ensuring the SEC would finish Round 1 no better than .500.) Fairleigh Dickinson, which was shipped to a 16-seed First Four game last year, turned around and beat Purdue.
Minor tournament expansion to 72 or 76 teams, which administrators say are the most likely options at this point, would likely penalize the small conferences by creating more play-in games for the No. 16 seeds (though the exact format is still unclear). That could knock the Oaklands, the Yales and the Duquesnes down another seed, all so we can get a few more power conference teams who are barely above .500. Feel the excitement?
The SEC did a lot of chest-thumping this year that it was one of the best basketball leagues in the country. A single-elimination tournament isn’t the best judge of that, but when more than half your teams lose to lower seeds, that’s a tough look. That’s why we play these games.
It’s not hyperbole to say these first-round upsets could play an important role in the future of the tournament. Public backlash still matters. The leaking of the 3-3-2-2-1 auto-bid model under discussion among CFP leaders met swift public pushback, and expansion to 14 teams has been put off at least for now. Perhaps some underdog runs and the harsh reaction to Sankey’s comments could delay tournament expansion, too. It certainly doesn’t hurt. The basketball gods did their part. How far Tennessee, Alabama and Texas A&M extend their runs will also go down in the story the SEC tells about this month, but the other five schools to make the field haven’t backed up Sankey’s bold stance.
Throughout this opening weekend, nearly every coach, player and fan has expressed how they love this tournament for what it is and what it represents. The people in charge need to be reminded of that.
For ticket information on all tournament games, click here.
(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
