SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was let down to see two high-profile football games involving his conference get canceled, but he doesn’t blame the schools for backing out of the series.

Instead, he thinks the College Football Playoff may have played the decisive role.

“I saw a series that was disappointing from my perspective when Nebraska announced it wasn’t going to play a contracted series with the University of Tennessee,” Sankey said during his appearance on The Paul Finebaum Show.

“I think that would have been great for college football. Early in the season, we saw Wake Forest like two or three days before the first game of a two-game series with Ole Miss cancel that.”

Nebraska canceled its series with Tennessee that was scheduled for 2026 and 2027, but Sankey said the Cornhuskers’ brass told him it was a talk with the CFP that helped him make the decision.

“This is not to point the finger at Nebraska’s athletic director, who I have a good relationship with, but he said, ‘I talked to CFP selection committee members and they said they didn’t think not playing that game would hurt Nebraska’s opportunity for the CFP,’” Sankey said. 

He added: “I think we have to cope with that reality. That’s not great for college football.”

Conventional wisdom has dictated that teams have an incentive to play tougher non-conference games in order to score points with the committee when it comes to strength of schedule.

But the apparent signal that Nebraska got from insiders connected to the committee, at least according to Sankey’s comments, was that it wouldn’t make enough of a difference to risk not playing an SEC team in the regular season.

Even so, a matchup between blue-blood programs like Nebraska and Tennessee, playing at their respective historic home venues, would be great for the sport and Sankey would prefer keeping these notable games on the schedule.

“I’d like to see us play more of these high-profile games both within the conference and outside the conference,” Sankey said.

“But we have to recognize the CFP selection process is an important governing decision-making factor that contributes to the eventual outcomes, whether it’s non-conference games or whether it’s the number of games played within conferences.”

He added: “Some have made decisions within their TV negotiations to expand from eight to nine. We’ve not made that at this point. It’s part of what’s on the agenda for the months ahead.”

More … SEC chief backs 9 conference games

And … Insider reveals real reason Nebraska nixed Tennessee football series

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