Alabama football didn’t make the College Football Playoff in 2024, and the perceived snub is still impacting the SEC. According to commissioner Greg Sankey, speaking to reporters Monday ahead of the league’s spring meetings in Miramar Beach, Fl., the choice to place SMU in ahead of the Tide, along with Ole Miss and South Carolina, could affect how schools schedule games in the future.

It might also impact a potential move to a nine-game league slate, with teams skittish that they might not be rewarded for a difficult schedule come playoff time. On Monday, Sankey was asked whether the choice to leave out Alabama surprised him.

“I don’t know that I’d say surprised, I think that’s one of the realities,” Sankey said. “But I spoke in July at media days, asking how will a 9-3 team, and I used Georgia as a really good example given their three really difficult road games, how do you evaluated that against other teams that don’t come anywhere close to that?

“And as I said, we learned something the first time through (the 12-team playoff selection process). And that raises the need for deeper analysis and understanding. If we’re gonna just incentivize wins, playing fewer winning teams can get your to more wins. I don’t think that’s great for the football.”

Alabama lost three games during the 2024 regular season. It fell to Tennessee, which made the playoff, but also to Oklahoma and Vanderbilt teams that were nowhere near playoff quality.

SMU, which had just one loss, in the ACC championship game against Clemson, made the field ahead of the Crimson Tide. South Carolina and Ole Miss were also arguing for their own inclusion ahead of the Mustangs, who lost to Penn State in the first round.

Leagues are discussing possible new formats for the CFP, some of which would reportedly include auto-bids for the SEC. Sankey said the SEC has not committed to supporting any one format for future playoffs.

“We’ll see how that conversation manifests itself this week,” Sankey said. “And we’ll look a little bit more deeply at different ideas.”

Even so, when asked, Sankey said he wasn’t unhappy with how the first year of the 12-team playoff went. He did express support for a recent change to how teams will be seeded.

“You’d like to have more teams,” Sankey said. “…Yeah, it went well. We had 12 teams selected, there’s always going to be agreement and disagreement. I think we’re late in adjusting the seeding. I think that could have happened sooner. We’ve done that for the year ahead.”

SEC spring meetings are scheduled to continue through Thursday in Florida.