SEC commissioner Greg Sankey sends dismissive message on potential super league

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey didn't sound all too convinced that the proposed 80-team college football super league that's been floating around in the past few weeks has any legitimacy based on his comments at the College Football Playoff meetings on April 24.

“I haven’t talked about the super league and I’m not going to do it today," Sankey said (h/t Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger). "The fact people have interest in throwing ideas out, that’s up to them. I spend my time on what I have to do.

"All this private equity... If you use the cliche ‘If I was buying stock, I’d buy stock in college sports.’ Well, apparently there are a lot of people who believe that outside of college sports. Something is going right."

AAC commissioner Mike Aresco emphasized "that college sports will need to move to a tiered collective bargaining model and that the SEC and Big Ten officials are discussing such possibilities," per Dellenger.

SEC and Big Ten breaking from NCAA has Group of Five schools thinking of forming new College Football Playoff

So from the sounds of it, the SEC and the Big Ten have something up their sleeve that may leave out the rest of the Power conferences -- the burgeoning Big 12 and the soon-to-be-declining ACC -- and the Group of Five schools; which may, in turn, be planning their own College Football Playoff.

"You've got presidents and chancellors [from the Group of Five] now saying, 'Why would [we sit] around waiting for the inevitable, which is a total break [by the SEC and Big Ten]?'" one Group of Five administrator familiar with former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley's proposal told CBS Sports. "We better start doing some things."

A second Division I FBS College Football Playoff would likely draw similar interest to the FCS tournament, which is not to say it'd be overwhelmingly popular but certainly not watched by no one. The 2024 championship game between South Dakota State and Montana drew just over a million viewers, nearly the same viewership as the high school All-American Bowl.

It would help crown a true Group of Five champion, but it'd also further delineate the differences between the Power and G5 conferences; undermining the latter while further boosting the former.

That'd probably make more money for the NCAA/SEC/Big Ten/etc., so it'll probably happen.