If there’s a narrative that has defined the Southeastern Conference’s offseason, it has been the threat of a breakaway from the NCAA’s current structure.

The possibility of defecting was an overarching theme in May to the conference’s annual spring meetings in Destin, Florida. Georgia president Jere Morehead sounded the alarms as something the SEC needed to consider, especially if proposed federal legislation didn’t deliver the long desired and lobbied solutions it has asked for. 

Kirby Smart, Morehead’s national championship-winning coach, echoed his boss’ perspective down in Florida.

“I’ve said this for a long time now…I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find rules that everybody plays by, then we should play our own,” Smart said in May. “I’m not afraid of that.”

The possibility of the SEC breaking away from the NCAA came up again this week down in Florida again as the SEC’s annual media days hit Tampa. When asked about whether there had been conversations around the SEC breaking off to do its own thing, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey did nothing to tamp down the speculation. 

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“They’re real,” Sankey said. “People have talked about that. They’ve opined about the frustrations that bring them to the point of saying we should look at something significantly different. I do not believe that is a leverage point. I think that’s just honest communication.”

Whether Sankey’s last point is truthful is debatable. There are those within the SEC who insist the threats and frustration are real, and that the SEC could forge its own path. Others outside of the SEC realm have been skeptical that it is anything more than a tactic to gain back some leverage. For years now, the threat of a possible breakaway from the NCAA has loomed over college athletics. The SEC and Big Ten have used it to their advantage, too, in College Football Playoff discussions, wresting power away from the other conferences after threatening to walk away. 

SEC’s slide diminishes threat

The issue is the SEC threatening to walk away, even if it’s never been more realistic to some stakeholders, doesn’t hold quite the same power as it once did. The Big Ten has won the last three national championships. The SEC appears to be on an island in its playoff expansion desires as the Big Ten swayed the ACC and Big 12’s support to its preferred 24-team format. The SEC is still a television ratings behemoth and its slogan of “It Just Means More” still rings true, but the conference doesn’t seem to have quite the juice it once did. Morehead’s suggestion this spring that last season’s Georgia-Alabama SEC Championship could be for the national championship elicited chuckles and eyerolls across the sport. The more the breakaway is talked about without corresponding action, the less impact it has. 

Could the SEC break away and do its own thing? Sure. The ratings would still be very good. We’d all still watch the Iron Bowl, Georgia vs. Florida, the Egg Bowl, etc. Fans would still pack Neyland Stadium, Kyle Field and Tiger Stadium to see their teams. 

But would college football be better if the SEC did that? Of course not. 

We haven’t had a shared national championship since the 2003 season in which LSU and USC each claimed a share of it. That’s a good thing. We don’t need to go back to a world where the national champion isn’t decided on the field. The sport has plenty of challenges, but one of the core conferences splintering off would only make things worse. We don’t need six months of offseason debate over whether the SEC champion or the CFP champion is the true national champion. 

Sankey could save college football (again)

When I think about a possible SEC breakaway, I think back to the COVID-19 impacted pandemic season. It was a tremendously taxing time for college athletics leaders – as it was for many of us – and there was no easy solution to the myriad of real issues that cropped up. No one in college athletics showed better leadership during that period than Sankey. He was patient, thoughtful and resilient in the face of outside pressure. When other conferences, especially the Big Ten, made rash decisions to postpone games, he resisted the urge to follow them. 

There’s a real argument to be made that without Sankey’s leadership, there would not have been a fall 2020 college football season. Especially not with the Big Ten and Pac-12 announcing in August they were postponing their fall seasons until the following spring. But while the SEC was prepared to possibly go at it alone, Sankey realized there was power in numbers. He believed the ACC was on board to stay the path, too, and was deeply worried about whether the Big 12 would or not. Having three of the Power Five conferences competing that season would give it additional legitimacy. Eventually, all three committed to playing the 2020 season, albeit with some adjustments like a conference-only SEC slate. That forced the Big Ten and Pac-12 to reverse course and play a shortened fall schedule after all.

“A lot happens, and we always played college football,” Sankey told me last year. “We’ve had World Wars, we played college football. We had a pandemic in 1917 – I think that was the Spanish flu – we played college football. One of the books I read indicated that there had arguably been seven pandemics in the last century, and we played college football. We had a stock market crash and not only did we play college football, but we birthed the Southeastern Conference out of the Great Depression. We had civil unrest, which we dealt with in 2020, and we played college football. I was in an intense, constant learning cycle with really valuable pieces of input that hopefully inform effective decision-making.” 

That historical perspective is helpful when understanding the current landscape of college athletics. There is deep frustration throughout the system. Frustration over NIL and revenue sharing. Frustration over the barrage of lawsuits, especially eligibility-related ones, and the frequent losses in the court system. Frustration over current proposed federal legislation that initially aimed to limit the power of the SEC and Big Ten, among other thrusts. 

And, yet, the games each Saturday are still great. Through it all, college football is still played. 

Breaking away could create more problems

The solution isn’t walking away. It is finding realistic fixes to the sport’s woes and common sense compromises with the other powerful conferences, especially the Big Ten. 

Sankey, in comments to CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello on Tuesday, seems to understand that. 

“I also think that if we just walked away from the NCAA, whether we’re frustrated or not, we’d be back in front of Congress in a conversation,” Sankey told CBS Sports. “So, my observation to our league is that’s not a priority for us. And so, the headline that’s developed – that there’s some breakaway being considered – that’s not actually what the answer was. There are frustrations, informing the ask that there has to be a better way, and we’re trying to work to improve the system.”

That last part is key. Improving the system, not creating its own, is what the SEC must do for the betterment of the sport.