Mr. CFB: Why The SEC Should--and Probably Will--Play A Nine-Game Conference Schedule

As the annual Spring meetings begin Tuesday in Florida, the conference is divided over what to do with football scheduling starting in 2024.

Destin, Fla.--I started coming to the annual SEC Spring meetings in 1990. And for the most part these meetings have always been an end-of-the-academic-year celebration where the conference would pass out the shared revenue checks.

But every now and then there would be weighty matters to discuss that could change the entire trajectory of the conference, The most obvious example was  the year rookie comissioner Roy Kramer informed his head football coaches that starting in 1992, the conference would expand to 12 teams (adding South Carolina and Arkansas). The SEC would go to divisional play, and would create a conference championship game on the first Saturday in December.

And one other thing: The conference football  schedule would expand from seven to eight games.

As you might imagine, the coaches were not fond of the idea of playing an expanded conference schedule and THEN having to win yet another game for the conference championship. Alabama Coach Gene Stallings was so frustrated that he predicted that the conference would never win another nationall championship. 

"Most of the coaches I  talked to wondered why we were doing to this," Steve Spurrier told me in an interview several years ago. "Nobody else was doing this." 

Exactly.

Roy Kramer was one of the great visionaries in the history of college athletics. He won a Division II national championship as a coach at Central Michigan. He was a successful athletics director at Vanderbilt when he was tapped by the SEC in 1990 to replace Harvey Schiller.

Kramer knew the SEC, as good as it was,  coulld do more--competitively and financially-- if  it was willing to step out of its comfort zone.

You could say that Kramer's vision worked out okay. Since 1992 the SEC has won 18 national championships in football.  

In his first year as commissioner, each SEC team received just over $2 million in shared revenue. In the 2022-23 academic year that is now closing, that figure will exceed $50 million per school.

Mike Slive and Greg Sankey , two more exceptional visionaries, have built on what Kramer started and built well.

When Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC in 2024, the new television contract with ESPN kicks in, and the 12-team playoff increases post-season revenue exponentially, the share to each conference team will, according to some projections, exceed $100 million per school..

So here's the point. History tells us that the SEC has been at its verry best when it was willing to step outside of its comfort zone. And it has reached another such moment as  coaches and administrators gathered on the Florida panhandle on Tuesday.

I'm going to keep this simple. In 2024 the SEC will adopt a new  football scheduling model. It will be one of two options:

The eight-game scheduling model will have each team with one permanent opponent and seven teams that rotate on and off on a yearly basis. Divisional play, which was instituted when South Carolina and Arkansas joined the conference in 1992, goes away. The SEC will be 16 teams with the top two teams going to the conference championship game.

Under the nine-game scheduing model, each team will have three-permanent opponents with six teams rotating on and off the schedule. 

Let's take Georgia. The defending nationall champions would insist on having Florida as its permanent opponent because of the lucrative yearly game in Jacksonville. They would also want Auburn because the two have been playing since 1892. It is the oldest continuous rivalry in the Deep South. Georgia's third team would likely be a border state like South Carolina or Tennessee.

Both models are huge improvements over what the SEC has had for the past 30 years. That's because every school would play every other school in a two-year priod. In a four-year period every school would play every other school both home and away.

Example: Texas A&M joined the SEC in 2012. Today. some 11 years later, Georgia has yet to make a trip to College Station, Texas.

"That's important," an SEC athletics director said to me. "If a young man plays football at one of our schools, he should know that if he stays four years he will play at every stadium in our conference."

As you might imagine, the SEC member institutions are not unanmious on this issue. Again, it's not complicated. 

Those in favor of sticking with eight conference games believe the SEC should not make it any more difficult to get to bowls or get to the new 12-team playoff. There are a number of schools in the SEC to whom getting to a bowl on a yearly basis is important. Under a nine-game format those same schools would have one fewer non-conference game to schedule--and win.

"Adding another conference game would make it tough for some teams to get to six," an athletics director told me.

Obviously, some simply don't like the idea of half the conference getting five home games and the other half getting only four. Of course it evens out over a two-year period but that won't satisfy the fans with only four home SEC games.

Those in favor of the nine-game conference schedule have heard from their season ticket holders who want more quality games. Those same fans also know that with the 1-7 model, some traditional games like Georgia-Auburn and Alabama-Tennessee would not be played every year bit every other.

If we assume that Texas would be Texas A&M's annual opponent in the 1-7 model, that means that Texas would not play Oklahoma every season. The folks at the Texas State Fairgrounds and Cotton Bowl would take a financial hit if the game was not played every year.

Then there are those, like Alabama Coach Nick Saban, who have been on both sides of this issue. Saban long ago advocated for a nine-game SEC schedule. But then word got out that Alabama's three permanent opponents might be Auburn, LSU, and Tennessee.

"If you're going to play more games you have to get three (fixed) opponents right," Saban told Ross Dellenger of SI.com. "They're giving us Tennessee, Auburn and LSU. I don't know how they came to that decision."

Let me help you out, Coach.

Alabama has to play Auburn every year. No explanation necessary.

Year in, year out the Alabama-LSU game is among the highest rated in collge football.

Alabama-Tennessee,"The Third Saturday in October," is one of college football's most storied rivalries. And now Tennessee is getting good again. Last year's 52-49 win by Tennessee in Knoxville was a classic. Now you want to cut back and the game every other year?

Saban wants the permanent scheduling to be fair and if I was sitting in his seat, I'd feel the same way.

But I'm just not sure that fairness is going to be part of this discussion--nor should it be.  As my friend Rick Nueheisel of CBS ofter says "Fair is where you put a blue ribbon on a pig."

The fans want--and deserve--the best games

We'll see. Sankey will meet with his coaches, his athletics directors and his presidents. He met with a small group of reporters on Monday and from his body language I got the impression that Sankey, like the commissioners before him, feels it is time to make a bold move.

And let's be clear on this: The commissioner has the power to make this decision on his own regardless of the vote if he thinks it is in the best interest of the conference. He works for the presidents, not the coaches and not the athletics directors.

Sankey said he was not sure if a vote on whether or not to change the scheduling model would take place this week. There is still time and the biggest lesson Sankey leared during the pandemic was not to make a major decision until you've collected as much data as possible. We was patient and SEC fans were rewarded with a football season played under very difficult conditions

"We're poised to make a decision but time is still an asset," he said Monday.

There is even reporting from Sports Illustrated that there could be a stop gap plan to get the SEC through the 2024 season. On Monday Sankey sounded like a man who was ready to bring this process to a conclusion.

"I would prefer not to continue to circle the airport with the airplane," said Sankey. "I'd prefer to land it."

Asked if staying with an eight game schedule would be the easiest move at this point,  Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the strongest conference in college athletics, said this:

"A league at the forefront of college athletics shouldn't stay still," said Sankey.

Stay tuned.