The SEC is “poised to make a decision” this week on its future conference football schedule format, commissioner Greg Sankey said Monday night, although he added a disclaimer: He thought conference members were poised to vote last year, but they delayed.
With Oklahoma and Texas beginning SEC competition in 2024, time is running short.
“I don’t have a lot of angst that we have to decide,” Sankey said, “but I would prefer to not continue to circle the airport with the airplane. I’d prefer to land it.”
On one runway sits an eight-game schedule. On the other runway sits a nine-game schedule.
The SEC spring meetings will begin Tuesday, with a possible vote coming at the end of the week. Since these meetings a year ago, two schedule models have been hotly debated:
- An eight-game model that would have members play one assigned rival annually, plus seven additional opponents that rotate in alternating years.
- An nine-game model that would have members play three assigned rivals annually, plus six additional opponents that rotate in alternating years.
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What’s Greg Sankey’s preference? And will SEC members follow his lead?
Sankey hasn’t publicly stated his preference, but it doesn’t take an expertise in tasseography to read the tea leaves he laid out Monday night, when Sankey spent several minutes discussing the merits of a nine-game SEC schedule.
Sankey, though, doesn’t get a vote. Conference members will decide the issue. A simple majority is required for a model to be approved.
Sankey seemed to point to a possibility that one model might be approved for the short term, before a long-term pivot.
“A league at the forefront of college athletics does not stand still, and this is a league at the forefront of college athletics,” Sankey said. “Now, whether change happens immediately is part of careful consideration.”
Staying at eight games would be standing still. A short-term standstill would marked by the SEC sticking with eight conference games for 2024 or beyond, before eventually embracing a ninth conference game.
For years, the SEC has played eight conference games, even as other conferences like the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 have embraced a nine-game conference schedule.
Who gets to vote on scheduling?
This season will be the SEC’s last as a 14-member league, split into two divisions. Oklahoma and Texas will become competing members in 2024, and Sankey has consistently said the league intends to ditch divisions after this season.
OU and Texas will have representatives at this week’s meetings, and they’ve had the opportunity to provide input on scheduling, but they are not voting members.
The league’s current membership will decide, and that membership has been persistently divided in the scheduling debate.
Who favors eight games, and who favors nine?
Schools like Florida, LSU, Missouri and Texas A&M have stated public support for nine SEC games, while Kentucky and South Carolina are among those that have been in the eight-game camp.
In a twist, coach Nick Saban aligned behind the eight-game model this spring in an interview with Sports Illustrated, while bemoaning Alabama’s earmarked rivals (Auburn, LSU and Tennessee) in the nine-game model.
For years, Saban had stated his support for nine conference games.
More SEC games promotes fairness
Sankey poked holes in the support for an eight-game model. He suggested that the addition of one conference game would not have a substantial difference in bowl eligibility for the league’s membership.
“We’ve done predictive analytics. It’s actually a marginal change (for bowl eligibility),” Sankey said. “Maybe on the frontline it feels like a significant change, but when we’ve run the numbers, it’s not as if we have massive bowl ineligibility appearing from a nine-game schedule.”
The more conference games you play, the more competitively balanced the schedule becomes, Sankey said.
Additionally, he underscored the importance of secondary rivalries. A nine-game conference schedule would more easily allow for those secondary rivalries to be preserved. In an eight-game model, those secondary rivalries would be played in only alternating years.
“They’re huge games. I mean, huge games,” Sankey said of those secondary rivalries like Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia.
Sankey also pointed to the success of the SEC’s 10-game conference schedule in 2020, amid a restructured season during the pandemic year.
“The interest is high for our (conference) games,” Sankey said. “The viewership on our network that year was at a record level, because we weren’t playing the same kind of games that don’t draw the passion that a conference game does.
“And if you look at economics, the ticket pricing around conference games – high-level conference games – is very different than an FCS or a Group of Five game. Those are elements that, to me, are front and center.
“That doesn’t mean everyone agrees with that perspective.”
What about revenue from ESPN?
There had been a thought that ESPN might ante up more media rights money if the SEC increased to nine conference games come 2024, but Sports Illustrated reported that’s unlikely, at least in the near term.
If no additional ESPN money comes through, that could erode some membership support for a nine-game schedule.
Sankey contends that the front-end promise of additional ESPN revenue should not be the ultimate deciding factor.
“Money follows. It doesn’t lead. That’s the same here,” Sankey said. “When all you do is chase money, you make really bad decisions. That’s my view.”
The SEC’s chancellors and presidents will have another chance to debate their views this week, and, perhaps, finally vote.
Blake Toppmeyer is an SEC columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.
