SEC commissioner says breakaway talks are real, but league wants NCAA fix

Greg Sankey said Monday that talks about the Southeastern Conference separating from the NCAA are “real,” but the league still wants college sports fixed rather than broken apart. Speaking at SEC Media Days in Tampa, Florida, the commissioner put the sport’s biggest power questions, from governance to postseason control, back in the open.

The debate matters because the SEC is already one of the strongest brands in college football, with major television audiences and the revenue leverage that comes with them. The league agreed to expand to a nine-game conference football schedule beginning in 2026, a move that further underlines how much the SEC is shaping its own future as media money, playoff access and athlete compensation keep pushing the old model toward strain.

Sankey said the conversations inside the conference are not fantasy. He described them as “honest conversations” and said he has continued talking with congressional leaders about college sports reform, including the Protect College Sports Act. He also said there is “great frustration” among conference stakeholders about not being able to establish the rules and guidance they want.

That frustration has made even a theoretical breakaway into a governance story rather than a simple football story. A separate SEC structure would raise immediate questions about who runs championships, whether the NCAA would still control postseason access, and how much authority the biggest football schools should have over athlete compensation and revenue sharing. It would also force a reckoning for Olympic sports, which are currently tied to university athletic departments and, in many cases, depend on the wider NCAA system for scheduling, championships and funding.

A move by the SEC would not just affect one conference. It would deepen the gap between the biggest television brands and everyone else, putting smaller leagues under even more pressure as they try to protect access to championships, media revenue and institutional survival. The talk alone has become leverage, because the SEC’s size gives it the ability to force the NCAA, the Big Ten Conference and other power players to confront whether the current structure can still hold together.

For now, Sankey is signaling that the SEC wants a repair job, not a split. But by saying the conversations are real, he made clear that the threat of a breakaway is no longer buried speculation.