SAN ANTONIO — SEC commissioner Greg Sankey stood on the court in San Antonio amid a crowd of media members, Florida basketball players, coaches, and family. In his hand, he held small cards where he had written down stats throughout the game. The orange and blue confetti had fallen after the Gators outlasted the Houston Cougars 65–63, and Sankey was soaking in the moment as he watched the 2025 edition of “One Shining Moment” on the jumbotron.
It was the culmination of an exhausting weekend, during which he flew back and forth every day between the men’s and women’s Final Fours to cheer on his conference’s programs. But it was worth it: Monday marked the first time an SEC team had won a men’s basketball championship since Sankey was hired in 2015. The championship capped a historic year for the league that broke records from the minute the field of 68 was announced.
“I’m proud for Todd [Golden] and his team, I’m proud of our league,” Sankey told a small gaggle of reporters after the game. But he said it’s “not like we pulled some magic string. You don’t do that as a conference. You have to lay a foundation, and it’s really a tribute back to [the schools’] work.”
For years, the powerhouse football league treated men’s basketball like an afterthought. Despite being one of the richest conferences in the nation, with an appetite for perennial success in football as well as baseball and women’s basketball, SEC men’s hoops just wasn’t breaking through.
To change this, Sankey studied what had gone wrong in men’s basketball in the years between the Florida Billy Donovan era in the early 2000s and Kentucky’s 2012 championship—the last one the SEC was able to celebrate. Shortly after he took the helm, he hired former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese as an advisor for men’s hoops, and then NBA and college basketball coach Dan Leibovitz a more official role—one that had never existed at the conference.
“You know, I had some coaches who said, ‘We’re hiring this guy from the northeast world?’” Sankey said of Leibovitz. “He built credibility from day one, built credibility with our coaches, which—we just didn’t have that.”
The league encouraged teams to invest in facilities and top coaches, which SEC associate commissioner of men’s basketball, Garth Glissman, called “a common thread to the success we have had this season.” The SEC sent eight teams to the Big Dance in 2018, arguably considered a breakthrough year.
Glissman, who came from the NBA, took over for Leibovitz in 2023, and has tried to create a “college basketball Saturday” culture in SEC country that mimics all the pageantry of “college football Saturday.” He also started a coaches group chat.
By 2024, six of the top 20 highest-paid men’s coaches hailed from the SEC, games were selling out, and boosters were ensuring money was available for basketball teams as well as football in the new NIL (name, image, and likeness era). The league began sending several teams to the men’s tournament on a yearly basis.
But this season has topped all the others. It season hasn’t just been the best in SEC history—it’s been the best for any major conference in the NCAA.
The league sent a record 14 teams to the men’s tournament, seven of which made it to the Sweet 16. By the time the Final Four rolled around, the conference hadn’t just had a historic year—it earned $70 million in NCAA “units,” or prize payouts based on participation and prowess in the men’s tournament. That, in itself, was a major victory—the units system helps schools re-invest in basketball to continue building on their success.
But Sankey was adamant that financial incentives aren’t the reason the league is successful, even when the SEC routinely sends schools tens of millions per year, partially because of that success. “I banned our staff from ever talking about basketball units,” Sankey said. “You talk about victories.”
Florida and Auburn played each other in the Final Four, guaranteeing at least one would make the title game. But the biggest question still loomed: Could an SEC finally win a men’s championship for the first time in over a decade? The Gators answered that question with an electrifying comeback against Houston, securing a win in the final seconds—and bragging rights for the entire conference.
On the hardwood Monday night, Glissman told Front Office Sports: “We had some disappointing losses the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. We caught a little bit of flak on social media. I even saw a few posts suggesting that maybe, just maybe, the SEC was overrated. But you fast forward … I’m not one for bold predictions, but we feel like we’re just getting started.”
