The SEC faces a choice with its future football schedule: Opt for rivalry games like Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia, or continue with cupcake games?
If SEC finally embraces a ninth conference game, it could come with a financial reward from media partner ESPN.
Rivalry games promote strength of SEC’s brand, but can conference’s membership resist the catnip of games against directional schools?
Picture the scene in “Shawshank Redemption” when Morgan Freeman’s character goes in front of the parole board, expecting to be rejected once again. He comments on the mockery of the proceeding and says bluntly, “You go on and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time, because, to tell you the truth, I don’t give a (expletive).”
Yeah, that just about sums up my feelings on this upcoming SEC football scheduling debate.
Stay at eight conference games, or go to nine, I don’t much care anymore. Just put the schedule format to a vote in what will be a high-profile discussion item this week at the SEC spring meetings and make a decision.
As it stands, the SEC has approved no schedule format beyond the upcoming 2025 season.
The SEC carried on this scheduling charade for years since the announcement of Texas and Oklahoma joining the league. Some conference members previously pretended like they wanted an additional conference game, only to turtle up come voting time and preserve the eight-game conference schedule that’s supplemented with a feast of non-conference cupcake games.
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Before this came up for vote the last time in 2023, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey implied that money wouldn’t be a driver in the scheduling decision. Only an idiot would believe that, though. Money talks, and some conference members were reluctant two years ago to add another conference game unless ESPN, the league’s media partner, put more cash on the table. ESPN didn’t sweeten the pot.
Sankey proclaimed before the schedule vote in 2023 that the conference at the vanguard of college athletics “does not stand still.” Days later, the SEC’s membership unanimously voted to stand still with an eight-game conference schedule for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Eighteen months later, the Big Ten, which plays nine conference games, led all conferences with four playoff qualifiers. The jokes write themselves.
Rivalries hang in balance of SEC football schedule debate
The SEC cared so much about secondary rivalries like Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee in its divisional era that it built a schedule format around maintaining those games. This next vote on the schedule will test how much resolve still exists for protecting centuries-long rivalry games.
A nine-game conference schedule would allow for secondary rivalries like those two and others like Texas-Texas A&M to continue annually. Forging ahead with an eight-game format would put those secondary rivalries under threat of interruption unless the league abandons its stated goal of having all schools play each other twice during a four-year period.
Rivalry scenes like the “Prayer at Jordan-Hare” and cigar-puffing Tennessee fans tearing down the goal posts and baptizing them in the river after a long-awaited win on “The Third Saturday in October” help make the SEC brand what it is.
But, maybe SEC members will decide this week that it’s more important to leave room on the schedule for Tennessee to play Furman and Kennesaw State – both will come to Neyland Stadium in 2026! – instead of Alabama, and for Auburn to tussle with Jacksonville State instead of Georgia.
And after the Mississippi beats Wofford 92-0 in 2026, coach Lane Kiffin can chant “S-E-C! S-E-C!” and declare the strength of the SEC (half of which the Rebels didn’t play) so strong that the Rebels deserve a playoff bid with their 9-3 record.
Few SEC teams opt for 10 power conference games in current format
Credit Alabama, Florida and South Carolina for cueing up two Power Four non-conference opponents in 2025 to accompany the eight conference games. If Florida smashes Miami and Florida State en route to a 9-3 record against a rigorous schedule, well, we might see a 9-3 playoff team for the first time.
By comparison, the 13 other SEC teams will play only nine Power Four opponents. That’s one fewer Power Four opponent than teams like Arizona and Central Florida will play.
If Missouri can manage to fend off Central Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana-Lafayette, Massachusetts, Vanderbilt and one more SEC team, the Tigers would wrap up bowl eligibility.
That’s the beauty of the eight-game conference schedule: Bowl bids await for average teams that can beat bad teams in their out-of-league slate.
The beauty of the SEC adding a ninth conference game would be the creation of more matchups fans want to watch and media partners want to televise.
One fewer cupcake game also would bolster the SEC’s case when it comes time to stump for at-large bids for bubble teams.
Even better, ESPN might now be ready to fork over extra revenue in exchange for that ninth SEC game.
The SEC could even time its rollout of a ninth conference game with playoff expansion that’s probably coming in 2026. A bigger playoff would reduce the risk of an additional conference game thwarting a team’s opportunity for playoff access.
Alternatively, the SEC could stay at eight, turn up its nose at rivalries, rebuff the prospect of a bigger payday from ESPN, protect the cupcake games, and maintain the daintier conference schedule that offers minimal resistance to the league’s weaker members securing a Liberty Bowl bid.
At this point, there’s not much left to debate. So, go on ahead, sonny, and call it to a vote.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com. Follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
