Prior to reaching an agreement on an expanded College Football Playoff last month, the NCAA was reportedly facing the danger of losing the SEC and Big Ten from the postseason.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti told Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports that a pivotal meeting two years ago could've been the breaking point.

"Absolutely," Sankey responded when asked if the SEC would've left the CFP. "When we ended that set of meetings in January 2022 without a decision, I was clear: If you are going to walk away from this opportunity, we are going to reevaluate our position on format, revenue sharing and governance."

Notre Dame's athletic director and the 10 FBS commissioners who lead the College Football Playoff are set to meet on Tuesday in Dallas for their annual two-day spring summit, which will be the first time they meet since they reached an agreement on the new CFP television deal, revenue distribution model and format.

Under the new revenue model, the SEC and Big Ten are making a combined 58 percent of all CFP cash, Dellenger noted. The deal was necessary to keep both conferences in the fold.

"I think we felt confident that we were willing, if we couldn't craft a deal, that we'd look at other options. We would have started over," Petitti said. "Without seeing better alignment, we weren't going to sign. We were 100% confident and made it clear that we were only going to do a deal that worked for us."

Dellenger pointed to a January 2022 meeting over a proposed expansion format as the "pivotal moment" that led to the current power share by the SEC and Big Ten. When "discussions grew heated," some people left the meeting due to frustrations over the lack of progress.

The recent era of conference realignment eventually led to the SEC and Big Ten becoming modern "super leagues," so their demands eventually had to be met.

Sankey added, "People called me (after the latest deal) and said, 'Why did you take a hard line? Why did you put us in this position?' I said, 'You guys walked away from the deal.'"