{"id":670100,"date":"2026-05-28T12:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T12:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/670100\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T12:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T12:53:10","slug":"greg-sankey-sec-is-strongest-most-competitive-conference-in-college-football-by-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/670100\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg Sankey: SEC is strongest, most competitive conference in college football ‘by far’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Indiana<\/a> took down Miami<\/a> in the national championship last year, it completed a run of three straight titles for the Big Ten. The SEC\u2019s last title came in 2022 when Georgia<\/a> went back-to-back.<\/p>\n

Although the Big Ten has had the upper hand in recent years, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is still bullish on his conference. While looking at the league in its totality, he argued it\u2019s the strongest and most complete one in college football \u201cby far.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sankey noted the \u201cthin\u201d margins in competitive games, citing examples such as Ohio State\u2019s<\/a> missed kick to send Georgia to the national title game in 2022 and Ole Miss\u2019<\/a> final attempt at a walk-off touchdown against Miami in last year\u2019s Fiesta Bowl. While there were also some blowouts along the way, Sankey said the SEC is still the best in college football from the top down.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the entirety of our league, we are by far the most competitive, the strongest football league. By far,\u201d Sankey said Wednesday at the SEC\u2019s spring meetings. \u201cBut you\u2019re going to lose games when it\u2019s close and competitive like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo why have they surpassed us? It\u2019s an odd ball that\u2019s bounced a couple times the wrong way. Indiana was pretty dominant in the Rose Bowl last year. A lot of other games, you look, pretty close margin. And we\u2019ve been the beneficiary on those.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greg Sankey: SEC is \u2018a pretty special place\u2019<\/p>\n

When the SEC comes out on top in those tight situations, Greg Sankey noted he doesn\u2019t get that type of question. In fact, during the 2025 men\u2019s basketball national championship, he expected to hear it when Florida<\/a> trailed Houston<\/a> by 14 points. Of course, the Gators went on to win. But Sankey recalled someone still asking him about his assessment of the season if UF lost.<\/p>\n

During those high-level games, though, Sankey said there\u2019s very little room for error. While the SEC has won those matchups in years past, the Big Ten has done so in football as of late. Still, he said the SEC remains in its own class with data to support it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a competitive environment, the margins are going to be thin,\u201d Sankey said. \u201cWe\u2019ve come up on the short end. I can assure you everyone in this league is trying to figure out how to come up on the top end of that in the future. But I think, from a big-picture [perspective], the breadth, the depth of this league, this league stands alone. In fact, we saw metrics out of the College Football Playoff<\/a> presentation where there\u2019s no doubt we\u2019re the strongest league.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, there\u2019s some segments of other leagues that are towards where we are, but not nearly the entirety of a conference like the Southeastern Conference. It\u2019s a pretty special place.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Indiana took down Miami in the national championship last year, it completed a run of three straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-670100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}