Roy Kramer, former SEC commissioner who championed BCS system, dead at 96

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Former SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer, who became a pioneer for college football's current playoff structure, has died at age 96, the conference announced.

Kramer served as the SEC’s commissioner from 1990 to 2002 and made it one of the richest conferences in the nation during his tenure, mostly by negotiating lucrative television contracts. He began by bringing Arkansas and South Carolina into the conference in 1991 — a small preview of the massive expansion that has overrun the sport and college athletics in today’s era.

That allowed him to introduce the SEC title game, which added to a growing fount of media revenue. In Kramer’s final year, the SEC distributed $95.7 million to its 12 member schools, up from $16.3 million in 1990. In the 2023-24 fiscal year, the SEC distributed $808.4 million — a testament to the exponential growth in college sports that Kramer envisioned back in the 1990s.

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Former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer speaks during a dedication ceremony of the Doug Dickey Hall of Fame Plaza at the Neyland-Thompson Sports Complex in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Friday, Oct. 4, 2019.  (Calvin Mattheis/News Sentinel, Knoxville News Sentinel via Imagn Content Services)

Kramer championed the Bowl Championship Series system, which moved college football away from its long-held tradition of determining a champion through media and coaches’ polls. The system was in place from 1998 through 2013, until the College Football Playoff was introduced. What originally began as a four-team playoff replaced the BCS in 2014 and expanded to 12 teams starting last season.

Kramer insisted the vitriol