Posted on

SEC addresses possibility of being only league to play in 2020

Share

Commissioner says conference is committed to playing football this fall

www.sec.com This has been a wild week across the college football landscape.

It began with news that an announcement from the Big Ten that the conference was canceling the season, or at least postponing until spring, was imminent. It seemed that the other Power 5 conferences might follow suit. However, by the end of the day, the others had refused to do that and even the Big Ten appeared to be rethinking its stance.

Nothing is settled, though, as the Mountain West became the latest non-Power 5 conference to cancel or postpone until spring when it made an announcement on Monday evening.

The Power 5 conferences are all having emergency meetings this week but the sentiment among many players, coaches and athletic directors is that they want to play.

Even if the Big Ten decides to put an end to its season, that does not mean that the other four Power 5 conferences would go along with it. While it would not be ideal, they very well could play without one of them.

Even if the Pac-12 also made the same decision, it is not completely out of the realm of possibilities that the remaining three could play alone.

The SEC is the conference most likely to push forward with a season out of the Power 5. Football is king in the South and the conference's motto of 'It just means more' is incredibly true. Some people have even speculated that, if there were no other football at all, the SEC might still play a season with its 14 schools being the only ones in action.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was on the Dan Patrick Show on Tuesday morning and that very topic came up. While he did not dismiss it completely, it does not sound like it would be very likely.

“I don’t think that’s the right direction, really,” Sankey said. “Could we?

Certainly. So, there’s a difference between, 'Can you do something,' and, 'Should you do something,' in life.

And so, we’re actually set up with our schedule, with our own health protocols, that we could if that was the circumstance, operate on our own. I’m not sure that’s the wisest direction, but you know, there’s been a lot of interesting things have happened since March in college sports.”

The fact that Sankey even left the door open to the possibility shows just how big a business football is in the region. The schools have all established protocols to keep players as safe as possible and, if they were the only conference playing, the television ratings would through the roof.

LAST NEWS
Scroll Up