Big Ten, SEC partnership won't circumvent NCAA, Sankey says [Updated]

Updated Feb. 8: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey took some time Wednesday to shed light on the new strategic partnership, insisting that there is no plan to circumvent the NCAA. Sankey appeared for an interview on The Paul Finebaum Show and stated that the purpose of the partnership was to create a more streamlined approach to major issues like the College Football Playoff, NIL, and the current legal matters affecting college sports.

“What keeps me up at night is people thinking I have a set of magical answers,” Sankey said. “There are magical answers to our historic realities that have worked really well in college sports for decades, but now we’re being challenged in different ways — challenged within our own campus settings, challenged in courts, challenged in state legislatures and challenged in Congress.”

The partnership began after Sankey began feeling frustrated by the lack of progress on the College Football Playoff. Stakeholders reportedly approached him and asked the SEC and Big Ten to identify their goals.

However, when Finebaum alluded to this being an “alliance,” Sankey shot down the use of the word: “That’s a bad word. We can’t use that word.” Sankey doubled down on his argument that this move was not meant to counteract or cut out the NCAA in any way.

“This effort to form an advisory group is not about the NCAA,” he said. “We need a healthy national governing body. To the extent we can contribute to that in any way, that explains more what our focus will be.”

Someone is finally trying to figure out how to fix college sports. Hint: it’s not the NCAA.

According to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellinger, the SEC and the Big Ten are planning on creating a joint advisory group to “find solutions and steer college sports into the future.” Additional reporting from ESPN’s Peter Thamel suggested the two conferences would “look at the entire college sports landscape and solutions within it.”

“Pressures are mounting,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told Yahoo Sports. “We are not going to be status quo.”

The SEC expanded on the news in a statement released Friday. The conference noted this move was done as a leadership move “in developing solutions for a sustainable future in college sports.” The group will consult student-athletes and other key leadership bodies within the conferences.

“The Big Ten and the SEC have substantial investment in the NCAA and there is no question that the voices of our two conferences are integral to governance and other reform efforts,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said, via the SEC’s statement. “We recognize the similarity in our circumstances, as well as the urgency to address the common challenges we face.”

Additionally, the advisory group has no authority to act independently or as anything other than a consulting body.

The landscape of college sports has drastically shifted over the course of the last calendar year. With the collapse of the Pac-12 and the mass exodus of the Big 12 the SEC and Big 10 have expanded to include some of college sports’ most iconic and influential names. With the early period of NIL and the transfer portal, the landscape is in the midst of massive flux. The two biggest conferences hope they can help lay the architecture for the next few decades of college football.