Greg Sankey makes his stance clear on the aspirations of the SEC: “We want to be an everything league”

Greg Sankey has outlined the ambition of the SEC in the collegiate athletics landscape in the coming years. The conference has been known for its dominance in football since the turn of the century and has been making giant strides in basketball over the last couple of years.

In football, the SEC has won 12 of the last 18 national championships, showcasing the league as the gold standard in the sport. The conference also had 14 of its programs make it to the NCAA Tournament on Sunday night, the most by any league in March Madness history.

On The Pat McAfee Show on Monday, Greg Sankey made it known that the goal of the SEC is to dominate other sports in the landscape. He explained how much progress the conference is having in a host of other sports aside from football and basketball.

“We want to be an everything league,” Greg Sankey said on The Pat McAfee Show. “I think we’ve got one, two and three in gymnastics nationally right now. Baseball, one in softball.

“I haven’t checked the golf and tennis rankings, but we have to be close. There was a point a couple weeks ago where we had 14 teams, or 14 sports in competition, and we had the number one ranked team in 12 of those sports.

“That’s what we want to be. We go through this change, we talk a lot about opportunities across the board, we want to be great in everything, and I think we can do that.”

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Greg Sankey rejects the villain narrative coming the way of the SEC

Given the SEC’s immense influence in college athletics — alongside the Big Ten — Sankey and his team have often been cast as villains by the media and fans across the landscape.

However, during a Q&A with The Post and Courier, Greg Sankey outrightly rejected that characterization, calling it a clear misrepresentation of their intentions and goals within the realm.

“Tony and I’ve talked about that," Sankey said. "First of all, I’m accountable for what I say. And my first response is, there are a lot of people who write about what they think I think. And they try to interpret what I say, but they’ve never called me and asked or had a conversation. That’s on them, not on me.”

One of the issues the SEC and the Big Ten are being criticized is the automatic bids they're seeking to receive in the expanded version of the College Football Playoff. Both conferences are seeking four automatic bids, resulting in a lot of criticism.