Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Greg Sankey’s 2023 SEC Media Days press conference

4. Limiting CFP automatic qualifiers a focus

Earlier this year, Greg Sankey and the SEC were the leaders in expanding the College Football Playoff to 12 teams. Well, a huge a reason for that was revealed. This was the idea for Sankey to not water down the sport with mediocre conference champions in the playoff while still letting it expand. Automatic qualifiers was the issue for him. Here’s a bit of what he said.

"“I walked into one of the first meetings when we were looking at the format and said, If we want to expand to eight teams for the Playoff with no automatic bids, I’ll have that conversation. But moving to an eight-team Playoff and granting what were going to be six automatic bids, reducing at-large access, is unwise. If you look 2014, you would have replaced the 8th best team in the country with the 20th best team in the country. I don’t think we can survive that from a credibility standpoint.”"

Taking all of this into account, Sankey noted the four-team playoff model worked. He would be okay with an eight-team playoff model, but if there are six automatic qualifiers, then he is focused on going to 12 teams. Given what the other conferences want, that’s likely the future.

How does this all affect Tennessee football? Well, with the SEC expanding, if the league’s commitment is to a 12-team playoff with six at-large bids, it increases the Vols’ chances dramatically of getting in, assuming they return to prominence under Josh Heupel.

Had that system existed under Phillip Fulmer, they would have made it in 1993, 1995 through 1999, 2001 and 2003. The credibility of the league will make it easier to receive an at-large bid from there, and the impossible task of winning what is now a brutal conference is no longer relevant. That’s a huge boost for Rocky Top.