DESTIN, Fla. — When it came to football scheduling, the Southeastern Conference’s collective membership took the easy way out. The path of least resistance. Not a bold choice, but the safe alternative.
In a league whose ubiquitous motto is “It just means more” — words fluttering on flags jutting from the dunes outside the Sandestin Hilton during this week’s SEC spring meeting — it opted for “Less is more” on Thursday. Or, “It’s just good enough.”
The SEC presidents and chancellors voted to stick with an eight-game conference schedule, albeit with a format turned on its head compared to the one that will breathe its last breath this season. Instead of a 6-1-1 format — teams playing all six schools in their division, plus a permanent opponent from the other division and one rotating team — they will play a one-time, eight-game schedule chosen by the SEC with an eye toward preserving important rivalries.
A nine-game slate — which LSU and four other existing SEC members, plus incoming Texas and Oklahoma preferred — isn’t dead. It may still be the clubhouse favorite. However, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said Thursday afternoon that the conference could potentially stick with eight games after 2024.
Why did the SEC make this choice? There are three main reasons:
1. To see how the College Football Playoff committee will value nine-game schedules in other Power Five leagues when the CFP expands to 12 teams in 2024.
2. To see whether ESPN/ABC/Disney will come back to the table with more money on top of the $3 billion deal between the media giant and the conference that was struck before Texas and OU decided to join.
3. To help more second-tier programs have a better chance to become bowl eligible and have a chance at more home games by keeping a nonconference rent-a-win on their plates.
You can, if you so choose, rationalize it all. In reality, though, how unappetizing and timid. How disappointing, especially if the SEC does retain the eight-game model after 2024.
Everyone wants to see more SEC games and less SEC teams vs. directional schools. And the SEC, which has won 13 of the last 16 national football championships, is expected to lead, not wait for others to blaze a trail.
Multiple sources say LSU will play Texas A&M in 2024. The Aggies and Tigers appear to be likely permanent rivals beyond whatever long-term schedule format is adopted. In a nine-game schedule, sources have said LSU’s three permanents would be Alabama, Ole Miss and A&M. But all that now is thrown into some degree of limbo, along with other current annual games LSU plays against Arkansas, Auburn, Florida and Mississippi State.
You’d think the 2024 schedule — when it’s released on June 14 with a must-see, prime-time show on the SEC Network — still will have an LSU-Alabama game on it. The Tigers and Crimson Tide have been the most watched SEC rivalry for the past decade. LSU-Ole Miss? Good chance. And perhaps the SEC also will take into account LSU’s home game with Texas in 2020 that was wiped out by the pandemic and send the Longhorns to Baton Rouge for the first time since 1953. But that’s pure speculation.
What this all means for the legacy of Sankey is also an interesting question. He has been a cerebral and effective commissioner, and by dent of the office he holds is one of the most powerful people in American sports.
But the fact that Sankey, who everyone believes sees merit in playing nine games, couldn’t get the conference to line up behind a nine-game schedule is a strike against him. We’ll never know, but I believe Sankey’s predecessor — the late Mike Slive, who raised the concept of soft power to a high art — would have the SEC playing a nine-game slate come 2024 if that’s what he wanted.
At least this plan is progress of a sort. With the move away from the current scheduling model and divisional play, the SEC is finally untangling years of imbalanced schedules and gerrymandered divisions.
LSU had to play Florida annually at the height of the Gators’ program while fellow SEC West powers such as Alabama and Auburn got to dodge Florida most of those years. Georgia still has yet to play at Texas A&M since the Aggies joined the SEC in 2012. And the fact that Missouri — which also left the Big 12 in 2012 — is in the SEC East even though its campus lies farther west than any member schools other than A&M and Arkansas breaks the logic bank.
The SEC took a step toward scheduling sensibility. Credit must be paid. But it was a tenuous step at best, when the league could have chosen boldness.
“Over time,” Sankey said, “nobody is shying away from anything.”
Maybe not. But it will take longer than it should to get there.
