Report: The SEC could be moving to nine conference games as soon as next year
With Texas and OU joining the conference soon, the schedules have been in a bit of upheaval for the entire SEC. Of course, things never really got to a satisfactory point after Texas A&M and Missouri joined, as—for example—the Aggies still have yet to make a trip to Lexington, KY, or host the Georgia Bulldogs.
The decision was made last year to stick with an eight-conference game model, and it seemed like things were going to remain static from there. The obvious issue with this model, given the obsolescence of divisions, was the inability to preserve multiple rivalries while properly shuffling the schedule in a 1 permanent opponent, seven rotating opponents model.
The band-aid fix for this when 2025 conference opponents were announced a few months ago was that the conference kept all the same opponents from the 2024 schedule and flipped the venues. This made a lot of people displeased, but it also seemed to be a thinly-veiled sign that the SEC was planning on making a change—whether adding extra teams, shifting the current scheduling model, or something else.
Now, it looks like that shift in scheduling model is imminently coming down the pike. Ross Dellenger wrote a big story about the SEC, private equity, super conferences, Sankey, and more during Media Days, and included therein was the notion that a nine-game schedule could be coming soon to the nation's premier conference.
Inside this story: the SEC has “re-introduced” the proposal to add a ninth conference game as a topic on the administrative agenda, Greg Sankey tells @YahooSports.
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) July 17, 2024
A decision is expected early next year after officials watch play out the expanded CFP.https://t.co/arjftU7q7R
The angle of this being a revenue-generating mechanism should not be undersold. If a revenue-sharing model comes to college football, as has been widely speculated, teams will need to find anything they can on the margins. One more marquee game on the slate would help out a lot there.
Aside from that, this is the model that makes the most sense in a sixteen-team league. A model that includes three permanent games and six rotating games allows all rivalries to be preserved yearly, and each team will both host and visit every single other team in the conference in a four-year span.
I expect that, by hook or by crook, this will be the eventual conclusion of this process. It just makes too much sense for the conference, in every respect. Plus, then you don't have to hear Big 10 fans bragging about their extra game versus Rutgers or Illinois or whoever like it's relevant anymore.