SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said yesterday that the new strategic partnership between his conference and the Big Ten is a “response to a need for leadership” that can "introduce some new perspective [and] new ideas” but added the relationship is “ not intended to circumvent the NCAA ,” according to David Hale of ESPN.com. In an interview on “The Paul Finebaum Show,” Sankey said that the partnership with the Big Ten “would not act unilaterally but would instead be focused on creating a more streamlined approach to identifying solutions to college football's biggest issues.” Sankey said he first considered the partnership with the Big Ten after “feeling frustrated by a lack of progress during meetings on the College Football Playoff and with the Division I council last month.” After the latter meetings, Sankey said that a “number of stakeholders approached him asking for the SEC and Big Ten to simply identify their goals.” Sankey insisted that he is “not interested in cutting out the NCAA or other conferences from decision-making moving forward,” instead seeing the role of the SEC-Big Ten partnership as “more of a think tank that will then advance key suggestions on to the larger group.” Sankey: "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” ( ESPN.com, 2/7 ).
NEED SOME TRUST HERE : SATURDAY DOWN SOUTH’s Matt Hayes wrote Sankey “didn’t trust” former Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren, and because the SEC presidents “value Sankey and his leadership, they didn’t trust Warren, either.” There is "no chance a partnership happens" if Sankey and new Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti "didn’t grow to trust each other in such a short time." On the relationship between the two conferences, an SEC AD said, “There was significant damage there, that’s probably the best way to say it. When you have no idea what’s coming next, there’s no level of trust” ( SATURDAY DOWN SOUTH, 2/6 ).
