Greg Sankey on relationship with Kevin Warren: ‘We saw the world differently’

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been fairly frank in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic that he is pleased with the way the conference handled everything. Sankey has issue with how other conference commissioners, like the Big Ten’s Kevin Warren, approached it.

The SEC was one of the few leagues that didn’t want to instantly shut down seasons without exploring solutions. But that was definitely a minority position at the time.

“That’s an example where if you take this czar mentality, and let me deal with that, we would be ceding authority to one entity or one person,” Greg Sankey said. “It would not have worked well in the summer of 2020. I’ve yet to have a student-athlete come up to me who played during that time period and say, ‘Wow, I wish you hadn’t have tried as hard as you did.’ In fact, it’s just the opposite. It is, ‘Thank you for giving us the chance.’”

Still, there were many months where college athletics was operating in different directions. While the SEC was adamant about playing, the Big Ten was not.

Friction and tension built up, even among college administrators who most of the time are fighting on the same side.

“So fast forward to relationships, I had a warm relationship with Kevin,” Greg Sankey said of the Big Ten commissioner. “We saw the world differently. I had three colleagues in a room repeatedly just saying, ‘No, we’re not going to extend.’ And trying to ask them to explain, in fact, engaging in, ‘How do we address your concern, just tell me what it is and how do we work through those?’ Ultimately it took the presidents.”

Sankey bemoaned the fact that solutions stopped becoming the priority for some during the pandemic.

“Even though we disagree we can move forward,” Greg Sankey said. “What’s key is to identify the points of disagreement and then work on those. If there’s anything that frustrated me through that CFP experience is we never made the effort to work through some of the stopping points.”

In any case, Kevin Warren is no longer around as the Big Ten commissioner and Sankey has been hailed as remarkably successful as the Southeastern Conference continues to do well. In fact, even during the pandemic moves were playing out brilliantly.

The SEC was still very much competitive during that timeframe.

“One of my favorite stories is the women’s volleyball national championship won by Kentucky after months and months of an elongated season in the fall and the spring,” Greg Sankey said. “Our first, as a conference our first women’s volleyball national championship. That’s one of those things that wouldn’t have been there had we not tried.”

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