MIRAMAR BEACH, Florida — Greg Sankey arrived at the SEC's spring meetings Monday with a message for anyone expecting a breakthrough on the College Football Playoff: the SEC has time, and it intends to use it.
Every other power conference has picked a side on whether to expand the CFP from 12 to 24 teams. The SEC might be filled with varying opinions, but the conference's leadership is still thinking.
"I do not anticipate any decisions on the College Football Playoff -- just so we're clear, so we can tamp that down," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said Monday evening, the day before the conference's annual spring meetings were set to begin in Florida. "We have time. We'll have informed discussion."
That means the biggest story hovering over the sport will likely stretch into at least June, as the SEC remains the lone power conference not yet to publicly support expanding the format from 12 teams to 24 as early as the 2027-28 season. The SEC has long resisted expansion beyond 16 teams, but several athletic directors and coaches have expressed interest in renewing discussions initially sparked by the Big Ten last fall.
What is expected behind closed doors in a beachside resort in the Florida Panhandle is a wide range of opinions. CFP executive Rich Clark will present to coaches and athletic directors on Tuesday, covering the current 12-team format and selection process -- a point of contention a year ago -- before walking through the pros and cons of expansion.
Sankey pushed back on the cost of expanding to 24 teams, specifically the prospect of eliminating conference championship games to clear calendar space for a December playoff start.
The CFP's executives -- 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame's athletics director -- are not scheduled to meet until June.
Sankey has publicly supported expansion, but he offered last week that he prefers 16 teams. He reiterated Monday, however, that a decision from the SEC is tied to the coaches, athletic directors and presidents.
"I've never said, even last year, that we're opposed to some number other than 14. I've told my colleagues that," Sankey said. "I'm not an opponent of 24 or 28. We have to inform the decision-making. I think we did a good job informing our position last year on 16. We'll consider other ideas, certainly, this week and moving forward."
Sankey shared Monday that the SEC has studied expansion and how a 24-team playoff could affect the regular season, a point of debate among the sport's leadership. He pointed to Oklahoma's upset of Tennessee on Nov. 1 as an example, a signature win that propelled the Sooners into the CFP.
Would it carry the same weight in a 24-team field? Might teams with spots already secured sit starters late in the season?
"When you start to quantify, you look at a certain number," he said. "What are games that may have mattered in a smaller number under the scarcity principles of 12? All of those games are high-leverage games for Oklahoma. Where you go to 24, and maybe one or two of those games don't matter in the same way.
"Rivalry games will matter, I would argue. But, hey, if you've got somebody that needs to rest (at the end of the regular season) because they're in at 24, those are things that we want to try to understand. I think you can quantify that because we've done some of that work for our own purposes."
Most of Sankey's 40-minute session with reporters focused on the CFP and governance. While discussing the CFP debate, he reflected several times on his 2020 work with a CFP subcommittee that explored expanding beyond a four-team field. The committee consisted of three commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, and it studied playoff models for five-, six-, eight-, 12-, 16-, 32-, and 64-team formats. They landed on 12.
He said that experience can still inform the future, even as the portal, NIL and revenue-sharing have fundamentally reshaped the sport and its prominent issues.
"There was never one variable that was, 'We're going to expand just because of this,'" Sankey said. "That was never in there. There were a set of issues that were part of the presentations that informed the decision-making."
SEC coaches and athletic directors enter this week split on the CFP format, according to a CBS Sports survey conducted last week. At least three athletic directors and three head coaches prefer a 24-team playoff, and seven ADs and seven coaches expressed they are at least open to discussing an expansion to 24, including an outdated proposal discussed last year between the Big Ten and SEC to move to 16 with a commitment to expand to 24 within three years.
While compromise might be on the table among the SEC contingent, a 16-team playoff appears to be a no-go for the Big Ten. Big Ten athletic directors and coaches unanimously supported 24 at its annual meetings last week. The ACC and Big 12 voiced their support for the Big Ten's model earlier this month.
"We've had zero conversation about 16," Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said after the conference's annual meetings outside Los Angeles. "Plan B is what we have now (12 teams), what we negotiated ... we would stay with what we have."
The coaches themselves have also weighed in.
Earlier this month, the American Football Coaches Association formally recommended expanding the playoff field to its maximum. Their proposal was tied to tightening the postseason calendar so it doesn't conflict with the transfer portal in January, while also allowing a uniform season start date in late August -- a spot historically labeled Week 0.
The latest 24-team format proposed includes only one automatic qualifier spot reserved for the highest-ranked Group of Six champion. The remaining 23 teams would be seeded based on the Selection Committee's rankings, a point of contention among SEC schools since last spring, when the conference demanded tweaks to the committee's strength-of-schedule metrics.
The Big Ten and SEC hold decision-making power to change the CFP format, though they must consider the opinions of the other FBS conferences and Notre Dame before making a final decision. If the two conferences are unable to commit to a shared vision, the playoff will remain at 12 teams.
The deadline for a decision from the CFP's executives is Dec. 1.
