'I Was Honest About the Uncertainty'

Chaos was unfolding.

On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was sweeping across the country and dramatically altering the landscape of college basketball during the sport’s busiest time of year.

Amid the confusion and cancellations, Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey scribbled three words on a sheet of paper: “I need help.”

“I was observing what we needed,” Sankey said recently. “We didn’t need vaccines, which we did. We didn’t need testing kits, which we did. We didn’t need to get back to play. We just needed some help to figure out the path forward.”

Sankey led the SEC through that tumultuous period — and has since spearheaded conference expansion. In 2022, Sports Illustrated dubbed him “the most powerful person in college sports.”

The Daily Coach spoke to Sankey recently about how a harrowing medical episode shaped his life’s outlook, the critical leadership advice he received during COVID, and the importance of routinely evaluating your own performance.  

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.  

Commissioner, thanks a lot for doing this. Tell us a little about your childhood in upstate New York and some key lessons from it.

I grew up around construction. My dad was a welder and a member of the plumbers and pipefitters union. You learn about waking up early, working hard. There were no paid vacations.

I ended up during summers in my college years working on some of those construction jobs and vividly recall one of the guys I was working with say, “These guys never sit to eat lunch on a chair with a back on it.” There were either picnic tables or they were sitting on buckets. I was a much better student after those experiences.

You graduate from college and get a job at Northwestern State in Louisiana. What’d you learn about leadership in your early 20s?

My wife and I had been married eight months and celebrated our first anniversary in Natchitoches, La., far from where we’d grown up in upstate New York. We had a conversation about what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to work in Division I college sports. If I could, how far could I go? That became the predicate for a lot that’s happened and the decision to take a leap of faith and bet on ourselves and move to Louisiana.

In January of 1990, I was an intern making the whopping sum of $500 per month. I was in the athletic director’s office, and he knew I had a good set of golf clubs and had fired the golf coach that day. He said, “Do you want to be the golf coach?” I had this principle to never decline an opportunity. I did it for three years and still have contact with some of the parents and some of the players every so often from 30 years ago.

It was really good growth experience. I learned No. 1, to have some clear expectations and try to elevate those. Two, the need to have a bit of belief. It was a team that had finished in the last position of the conference standings for years. But you never begin with “Don’t finish last.” We wanted to finish something above and actually do something. We did some physical training, and the players were grumbling while we were doing it, but they felt better. They felt we put some time in, and we built on that.

You end up taking over as commissioner of the Southland Conference at a pretty young age. What stands out to you most from your tenure in the conference?  

I was 31 years old at the time. I was in that office for almost four years before I became commissioner. One of the first times I had a problem that landed in my lap, I asked for advice. Then, I realized I had to make the decision.

I learned my input in meetings as a leader was important, but it needed to be used wisely. You needed to let conversations develop, provide perspectives, shape the conversation. I learned how important the people around me were. I had an opportunity to hire a lot of staff and am proud of the people with whom I worked at the time.

I learned the power of being out and about with membership, not simply being in an office. And I learned the process of self-evaluation. That became a hard lesson after my first year.

You had a pretty scary incident where you collapsed at the airport during those years. How did that change you?
 
It altered how I tried to manage myself and how I made decisions.

I started taking notes about balance in life. I encountered a book by the author John Ortberg called “The Life You’ve Always Wanted.” That really made an impact on me because in the 12th chapter, there’s a line that said something to the effect of “Don’t seek balance in life. It’s not too big of a goal, it’s just not enough.” That re-shaped my thinking about decision-making and principles and how I would live.

I learned I needed the opportunity to take a break every so often, to refresh mentally, and I made that an every-two-month objective. I try to grab some space every day reading and exercising and being away from the work. I also went through an annual evaluation of myself after that. Where was I from a friendship perspective, with my family, from a fitness standpoint, financially, with my faith? That’s part of my career decision-making process as well.

I want to shift to some of your more recent tenure. Can you take us through those early days of COVID-19 and some of the challenges you faced?

Thursday of that week is when we stopped. Our thought was we would stop for three weeks. That was kind of the theme around stopping the spread in a contained time period.

Then, you realized there wasn’t any quick return. Gus Malzahn was at Auburn and called me early on and said, “Everybody is living with the uncertainty and the doubt and the concern. As you communicate, you can always give hope, some kind of promise that we’re going to keep trying. That would mean a lot to the players on our team.” I was intentional to try to do so.

After the year was over, I went back and evaluated my media interviews and the videos I could find. ESPN was really helpful to provide me with many of those. Pretty consistently, it was, “We’re going to keep trying. We’re not going to stop. We don’t know if we can.” I was honest about the uncertainty.

I also remember the emotions of the moment… I felt a responsibility to try to find a way, but we couldn’t. In a couple of private moments, there were some tears shed, some emotions, because I felt I owed it to the players and coaches to finish that experience, but obviously the circumstances took over.

How did you balance that need for optimism while also being realistic about the uncertainty ahead?

We had great people around us on campuses. They helped us access more great people, a medical task force. We were intentional to pivot our timing and thinking. In mid-April, 30 days into stopping, it pivoted from “We need to stop” to “We need to get back together somehow.”

Hunter Yurachek, the athletic director at Arkansas, shared a quote from Colin Powell. “I tell my staff, ‘Tell me what you know, tell me what you don’t know, then tell me what you think.’” That actually became a framework for our thinking, to hold ourselves accountable, not to deal with the outside noise of what people thought.

Then, (Florida AD) Scott Stricklin provided a message from Andy Stanley, who leads a church in Atlanta. He said, “What people need in times of uncertainty is not full answers. They just need some clarity. Where you can provide clarity, provide it. Where you can’t, be honest about it.”

There was a lot of time on my porch in the quiet moments wondering how I ended up in this position at this time, wondering what we were going to do because you couldn’t see a path forward.

I listened to a U2 song titled “The Little Things That Give You Away,” and I just put that on replay because it talked about waking up at 4 a.m. and all your innocence is gone, and you’re looking out and trying to figure out what’s next. That became a bit of my theme song every day.

I want to shift to SEC expansion and Texas and Oklahoma joining the conference. There weren’t really any leaks that those discussions were even taking place before that was announced. Can you discuss the importance of not gossiping as a leader?

I think it’s incredibly important. In any key decision, there are so many variables. In the expansion decision, you never really knew until the moment of invitation that it would move forward. The trusts had a full briefing with our presidents in early June about the possibility, with no clarity that it would happen. Also, just the observation to keep people updated on the environment around us was important.

We’re dealing with things now, speculation about the College Football Playoff, in our own room as we make decisions about football scheduling. What I share is there’s this notion that if I communicate anonymously or “Sources say,” it helps a particular side, and I think the reality is it actually hardens others’ positions and resistance to that, that kind of information being shared. I think it’s important for working together collaboratively that people can maintain confidentiality.

There’s an incredible amount of turnover presently in college sports, particular on the sidelines. What do you make of where coaching is in 2024?

I can repeat what I hear, which is that it’s hard right now. Most of the people involved as head coaches have worked through their career with a sense of stability around their team from year to year. That’s changed.

It doesn’t mean everybody just leaves, but the opportunity to depart is there. The economic opportunities around the student athlete with Name, Image and Likeness have changed, and the combination creates a discomfort.

One of my concerns is that if we cannot wrap our arms around an effective answer, we can lose a lot of good people who say, “This is not where I want to spend my life’s energy because of the challenges of leading.” I don’t think that’s everyone, but you’ve certainly heard that theme.

I know you wrote on a card after the airport incident your “life components,” which shape your views and your decision-making processes. Can you share some of those?

I tried over time to figure out how to codify some framework for how I thought.

On the front, one of the keys was a phrase “Invest in myself.” That really means that the responsibility for my growth is not something assigned to my workplace, to my boss, to my professor. It’s my responsibility to go seek learning opportunities. That was part of my interaction with The Daily Coach initially, those learning opportunities. I need to be challenged in my work so I can learn and grow.

I also borrowed a John Wooden quote, “Make each day your masterpiece.” That’s a high bar when you think about it.

“Laugh often” is a reality for me. “Be diligent in my work.” “Limit my life to avoid exposure to temptation.” “Be above reproach.”

In my experience, the decisions you make in advance can be the best decisions. Decisions in the moment are difficult.

Q&A Resources ― Greg Sankey ― Twitter | LinkedIn

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