SEC commish Greg Sankey joins hands with $2.2 billion Tim Cook's Apple for sideline iPads: Reports

The SEC media days kicked off in earnest on Monday at the Omni Hotel, Dallas, with opening remarks from Commissioner Greg Sankey. The ever-innovative commissioner announced a groundbreaking partnership between his conference and $2.2 billion-worth Tim Cook's (as per Forbes) Apple.

Sankey revealed that the conference would embrace the use of AI during games and hand out iPads to all programs to allow for real-time footage reviews.

“The innovative nature of our universities, and their collective work, has made the SEC the first collegiate athletic conference to convene an Artificial Intelligence Consortium that is already creating research and programming partnerships,” Sankey said.

The partnership will be a first in football with even NFL teams only able to watch replays via screenshots on Microsoft Surface tablets. SEC teams meanwhile will be able to rewatch real-time footage of the game on the iPads handed out to them by the unique partnership.

Apple also has a deal with the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) to provide iPads to all the teams in that conference this fall.

Greg Sankey quashes SEC growth talk

In the past few weeks, the situation in the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) has become volatile. The Florida State Seminoles and the Clemson Tigers are pursuing the litigation option to break free from the ironclad grant of rights deals.

A court allowed for the case tabled by the Tigers to move forward, reopening the conference expansion and realignment speculation with the SEC and Big 12 figuring heavily.

During the media days, Sankey was adamant that the conference was finished expanding and would not be drawn into any talk of poaching programs from other conferences.

“As I said, we’re focused on our 16,” Sankey said. “I’ve said before at media days that I’m not a recruiter. My job is to make sure we meet the standard of excellence that we have for ourselves on a daily basis. That attracts interest.

"It’s done that with the two universities that we’ve added this year. They’re not the only phone calls I’ve ever had, but I’m not involved in recruiting. We’re focused on our 16. Period. You heard from 14 deep to 16 strong. 16 is our today, and 16 is our tomorrow.”

During the conference meetings in Destin in May, the SEC already unveiled a 16-team logo, finally moving from the 10-team logo that characterized the conference for years. It showed that Greg Sankey might actually mean it when he says that his conference is closed for business.