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Danny Kanell: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey 'backed into a corner' by Big Ten's 24-team Playoff proposal

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For roughly a decade, SEC head football coaches left the league’s annual Spring meetings in Destin, Fla., without any resolution regarding the hotly-debated adoption of a nine-game conference schedule.

Then, last August, the SEC formally announced it would add an additional conference game beginning in 2026 to better align with Big Ten and Big 12, who have played nine league games for years. The ACC quickly followed suit, creating some rare uniformity among all of the Power Four conferences.

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The overwhelming expectation was the move to nine conference games would expedite the adoption of a 16-team College Football Playoff. Nearly a year later, there’s no consensus regarding Playoff expansion, with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey representing the lone holdout from the adoption of the Big Ten-backed 24-team proposal that’s garnered widespread support from the other three Power Four leagues.

And as SEC football coaches once again come together at the Sandestin Hilton on the shores of Miramar Beach, many are reportedly feeling hoodwinked by their commissioner. The biggest concern revolves around the impact a ninth conference game may have on the SEC’s chances of having multiple teams make the CFP’s 12-team field — for as long as it remains at 12, of course.

“Talking to the other coaches, they felt like by going to nine games, they felt like it would shift the playoff model (to 16), but it didn’t,” first-year Florida coach Jon Sumrall told On3’s Brett McMurphy. “They felt misled.”

But, at least according to one prominent SEC opponent, the blame shouldn’t fall on Sankey’s shoulders. In fact, CBS Sports analyst Danny Kanell suggests Sankey himself was likely the victim of a bait-and-switch courtesy of his Big Ten counterpart Tony Petitti with the introduction of the 24-team proposal last Fall.

Danny Kanell: ‘I think Sankey is backed into a corner where if they can’t agree on 16 or 24, it stays at 12’

“I don’t think they were lied to or misled (by Sankey), I think you just saw a situation that I don’t think anybody thought 24 (was a possibility last year). … (Now) I think Sankey is backed into a corner where if they can’t agree on 16 or 24, it stays at 12,” Kanell said Wednesday on Crain & Cone On3. “So that’s where I feel like, sure the coaches felt misled, but I don’t think Sankey – and I think it was possibly impossible to see this – ever thought 24 was an option, that the Big Ten was going to bring this to the table and the Big 12 and the ACC would get on board.

“So now he’s kind of backed into this corner where does he listen to the coaches in the SEC, but he’s not going to be able to go to 16 because the Big Ten is saying, ‘No, we want 24,’ and we’re at this stalemate. So, I think that’s where we are,” Kanell concluded. “Everybody kind of knows it’s the worst-kept secret that we are probably going to go to 24 no matter what people think about it, even though 16 is probably something that makes more sense.”

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti publicly dismissed any notion of a 16-team Playoff during the Big Ten’s annual Spring meetings last week in Los Angeles, and doubled down on the league’s desire for a 24-team field, a feeling his counterparts at the ACC and Big 12 have echoed earlier this month.

For his part, Sankey made it clear this week he’s not diametrically opposed to a 24-team Playoff, but he’s also not interested in expanding for the sake of expanding. Especially given the potential wholesale changes a 24-team Playoff would have on the college football landscape, including the end of conference championship games.

“I’m not an opponent of 24 or 28,” Sankey on Monday night. “We have to inform the decision-making. I think we did a good job of informing our position last year on 16. We’ll consider other ideas, certainly this week and moving forward. (But), I’ve never thought football was a tournament sport.”