Greg Sankey advocates for nine-game schedule in SEC, explains role College Football Playoff decision-making plays in discussion

A lot has been discussed in relation to the future of football in the SEC. Part of that continues to be the debate between an eight-game or a nine-game schedule for the conference, especially now within the context of what’s best for their teams trying to make the College Football Playoff.

While on ‘The Paul Finebaum Show’ on Monday, Greg Sankey said scheduling was part of what they talked about during the league’s meetings two weeks ago in New Orleans. That’s with the Southeastern Conference having not yet decided which format is best for them in 2026.

“Monday, Tuesday was SEC Athletics Directors only…We did talk about football scheduling,” said Sankey. “I don’t think it’s a secret that we have to figure out ’26. Much of the discussion is about should we play eight or nine games. That does transition into an analysis of the College Football Playoff, looking at what happened the first year of a twelve-team playoff.”

With that, Finebaum further asked Sankey about their scheduling

Following the additions of Texas and Oklahoma last summer, the SEC continued an eight-game schedule but without the respective divisions. That played out last fall and will do again this fall. From there, they’ll have to decide what’ll work for them in conference, for their non-conference, and how all of that relates to the CFP.

“Well, the decision of our schedule relates to the ’26 season. So we resolved ’25. That’s an eight-game schedule. I’ve said repeatedly we wanted to actually go three years of sixteen-team, eight-game, kind of single division, if you will, under a single format for our scheduling and the expansion of the College Football Playoff. So this was the first opportunity for our head coaches and our athletics directors to gather in a room, just look back, and talk about what happened,” Sankey explained. “Now, that took place the week before the College Football Playoff Management Committee Meeting where I learned a lot. You’ve seen some changes in some non-conference scheduling decisions that have taken place after our New Orleans meeting.”

Coming off the debut of the expanded playoff, Sankey said the total amount of losses being what the selection committee focused on is what concerned those in the room. Moving to a nine-game schedule, despite that being Sankey’s preference, would either risk more losses for teams trying to make the playoff or lead them to schedule an easier slate in the non-conference in order to avoid any early in the season.

They have to consider all of that while also not hurting the chances of multiple teams in the conference who are trying to make it into the College Football Playoff

“When you look at our path forward, you know, we look at the next few months being really important to gather information, talk about either opportunities or obstacles that may be in the way to the extent we can answer that. Like, what the priority of bowl qualification in the future? That’s still an important issue,” said Sankey. “Trying to understand how the selection committee for the CFP made decisions are really important. One of the issues in the room for athletics directors is, what seemed to matter most is the number to the right – the number of losses. How do we understand what that means for our schedule moving forward?”

“I’m one who said I really think we ‘ought to be trying to move towards a nine-game conference schedule. I think that can be positive for a lot of reasons. You watch the interest around conference games. But not if that causes us to lose opportunities,” said Sankey. “I can name some associations around that and that’s part of our thinking for our own schedule. That doesn’t necessarily guard (playoff) decision-making but I do think it’s important to understand how selection decisions are made and we only have one year of that experience as we go to make another decision about our schedule format.”