It is Memorial Day weekend, the beaches of Florida's Gulf Coast are full of sunburned children and people who look exactly like SEC boosters, and what better setting for Greg Sankey to walk into a conference room and get absolutely cooked by his own coaches.
The SEC spring meetings open Tuesday in Destin, and the anticipation has the energy of a season finale nobody asked for. Joel Klatt dropped a bomb on Friday: "I had multiple coaches tell me that 90% of the coaches in the SEC and 100% of the athletic directors in the SEC favor a 24-team model for CFP expansion," which is a polite way of saying Greg Sankey has been out here publicly defending a 16-team bracket that approximately nobody inside his own building actually wants. Klatt said the feeling in Big Ten circles is that "the meetings between Greg Sankey and his coaches are going to be contentious because the coaches are going to be pushing for one thing, and Greg has publicly stated something very different." Just once I want an SEC coach to walk up to a podium and say the quiet part loud, but instead we get anonymous surveys and whisper networks. At least Klatt has sources.
What the coaches actually fear, per Klatt, is that "the middle class is going to stop investing" if there's no expanded definition of success — meaning eight-win programs stop spending NIL money if a playoff spot is never realistically in reach. Which is a real argument! Presented by the same conference that spent a decade arguing that 12 teams watered down the product. Growth.
Meanwhile, in the ongoing saga of Lane Kiffin explaining things nobody asked him to explain, the new LSU head coach spent the better part of two weeks apologizing for telling Vanity Fair that "hey, coach, we really like you, but my grandparents aren't letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi" was a thing he heard from recruits. His apology was the classic non-apology: "I really apologize if anybody at Ole Miss or in Mississippi was offended by that. It wasn't calculated by bringing it up." Sure. Four-hour Vanity Fair interview. Just accidentally brought up race and geography in recruiting. As one writer at Andscape correctly noted, Kiffin cannot exactly throw stones from Baton Rouge, which exists in the same region, benefits from the same power structure, and recruits the same Black athletes from many of the same communities. Kiffin is returning to Oxford for the Sept. 19 rivalry game, and honestly, tailgate conditions are going to be historic.
On a genuinely sobering note: Missouri star running back Ahmad Hardy — who led all Power Four players in rushing with 1,649 yards and 16 touchdowns last season and earned first-team All-America honors — was shot in the upper leg at a concert in his home state of Mississippi on May 10. He underwent surgery, returned to Columbia last week, and posted a video from campus this week saying "I'm back to the road to success." Coach Eli Drinkwitz said "there is an opportunity he could be back this year." Hardy grew up in a two-bedroom trailer in Oma, Mississippi, walked on at UL Monroe, and turned himself into one of the best players in the country. Root for the man.
The SEC is going to Destin to argue about bracket sizes and kill each other over ESPN money. Feels about right for late May. See you on the other side of the Sankey press conference.
