Pretty much every debate over who should play for the national title, every argument about the staggering amounts of money, every tirade about how college football is nothing like what it used to be, traces back to a man who saw a lot of this coming, then made a lot of it happen — Roy Kramer.

Kramer, the onetime football coach who became an athletic director at Vanderbilt, then, eventually, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference where he set the template for the multibillion-dollar business college sports would become, died Thursday. He was 96.

The SEC said he died in Vonore, Tennessee.

The man who currently holds his former job, Greg Sankey, said Kramer “will be remembered for his resolve through challenging times, his willingness to innovate in an industry driven by tradition, an

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