Greg Sankey gives update on SEC football decision

We have not known if the SEC will have a football season in 2020. We don’t even know if there will be football for any conference in 2020 due to the coronavirus.

But the SEC and commissioner Greg Sankey set a deadline for next week to make a decision on if they will play. The only problem is that Sankey put the deadline itself in doubt this morning, as he said in an interview this morning on The Dan Patrick Show.

“I set a timeline based on what I saw in May as factors,” Sankey said. “That timeline is gone. So, we’ll actually go to next week and have a really important check-in point, but I’m now not of the opinion that I have to make a decision then, which that will be news right there. ‘Wow, they may not make a decision,’ but this whole thing is fluid, so the ability to make sure we’re treating people well, supporting their health and safety, that’s a guide, that’s right where you and I started today. We’ll convene over the next couple of weeks and then we’ll go potentially into the next stage of practice.”

The Pac-12 and Big-Ten have already moved to a conference-only schedule for this season, with the hope we even have a season. But Greg Sankey said he is still hopeful that the SEC can work out an agreement with the ACC and Big-12 to schedule some games for this season.

Just last Monday, Sankey and all 14 AD’s in the SEC met in Birmingham to discuss different scenarios for the upcoming season, and not all of them were positive.

“There was a significant element in that conversation that was sobering,” Sankey said. “It was a realization of what is happening around us, of the decisions that are coming. Not that there hadn’t been attention to that, but when you get in a room with all of your colleagues and you start walking through the different decisions to be made, I think that’s sobering for everyone.”

If the timeline to make a decision is even being postponed, then I don’t see any positive scenario for college football taking place this fall.