Greg Sankey suggests the SEC breaking away from the NCAA is a very real threat

The concept of major conferences breaking away from the NCAA is considered to be mostly a talking point, or pipe dream with little basis in reality. For the SEC, the topic was briefly talked about at the conference's spring meetings in late May. 

As the calendar has flipped to July, all eyes are on Tampa, Fla. for the conference's SEC Media Days over the next four days. In one of his first press conferences at the event, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey insisted that the conversations about the SEC breaking away from the NCAA are very real indeed.

"So they're real, Sankey said on Monday. "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."

Among the various points of frustrations among the league include changes to eligibility rules, recruiting tampering and NIL and the transfer portal. There's also the chaotic time of year in college football during late December when teams are trying to navigate conference championships and playoff games during peak transfer portal and recruiting activity while the coaching carousel spins the fastest.  

Sankey added that the conference being able to govern itself in the past makes breaking away seem, at the very least, possible. 

"What I think is important is those comments represent a high level of frustration with the circumstance in which we find ourselves," Sankey continued. "We have regulated ourselves more progressively than other colleagues by choice, across our league. We've had different academic eligibility restrictions in the past. So we have different transfer restrictions in the past. Some of what you hear comes out of a culture that we can regulate ourselves."

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, who is scheduled to speak at SEC Media Days on Tuesday along with South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer, also spoke about the possibility in May. 

"I've said this for a long time to our president," Smart said via ESPN. "I've been a huge advocate that if we can't find rules that everybody plays by, then we should play our own. I'm not afraid of that. I'm not afraid to break away and say that our conference is strong enough to go out and play."

There is obviously a lot that would have to happen for the SEC to truly, formally break away from NCAA—including figuring out how that would work with respect to the finances, how athlete scholarships would be affected as well as how that would affect NCAA-sanctioned championships. It's clear that there are wide frustrations across the conference with respect to the various rule changes in recent weeks, so much so that the conversations about breaking away have been very real. 

So real that Sankey felt the need to address them in his annual SEC Media Days press conference. 

This likely won't be the last we hear of this topic across the next few days, and I wouldn't be surprised if more SEC coaches discuss it in Tampa. 

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