Greg Sankey details SEC scheduling, division models with addition of Texas, Oklahoma

Oklahoma and Texas reached an agreement to leave the Big 12 for the SEC ahead of the 2024 season. Once that move happens, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will have overseen the conference’s growth to 16 teams.

In turn, there are questions that Sankey and the SEC need to answer about the future of the conference, specifically relating to football scheduling and the division model.

“I had two things in mind and said it repeatedly, again, dating back to the expansion announcement,” Sankey said on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning.

“One was that we engage in what I call blue sky thinking. That’s not a term that originates with me, but take a step back and look at the big picture. Forget all of the old encumbrances and think about what are the options in front of us, and we’ve explored dozens of scheduling models and people send me scheduling ideas. In fact, just walking in my office there’s yet another letter with another scheduling idea that we’ve already processed through.”

Sankey emphasized that the SEC is looking at a single-division model. That would get rid of having an SEC East and an SEC West. It’s also a move that would mimic the PAC-12, which already got rid of definitions.

Importantly, Sankey also wants to make sure that every team plays more frequently than they have under the current model.

“So, we’ve accomplished kind of the first objective. Let’s look at all of the options available. The second was let’s rotate our teams through campuses with greater frequency. We saw games last year, Missouri at Auburn, for example, that hadn’t been played since we added Missouri back in 2012. The one that sticks out in most articles is Georgia has not traveled to College Stations since Texas A&M has been a member. That shouldn’t happen. We shouldn’t be going 12 years between campus visits,” Sankey said.

“With the prominence of our universities, the strength of our football programs, the visibility of our teams, we should be rotating our teams through more frequently. So, those have been the two objectives I’ve identified. We have focused most recently on a single division format.”

The next important note that Sankey made was to point out that there is still concern about traditional rivalries. The question is how many rivalries will teams have and how often will they play? That depends on how many conference games there are going to be.

“We’ve been intentional about discussing our ability to have annual rivalries played or rivalries played every other year. We haven’t arrived at a destination between eight or nine games. The number of games will facilitate the number of annual games that take place.”

At the same time, different SEC schools have different priorities. That includes having different opinions about what a balanced schedule looks like.

“We also have looked kind of at the bandwidth of balance and fairness if you will in a schedule. We’ve worked with athletic directors to define what that means. You’re always going to have variances of the competitive nature of a schedule based on the other team’s success and your team’s success in that particular season. So, those are guiding principles.”

Sankey was even bold enough to say that the SEC wants to have its model decided before Spring Meetings in Destin. That’s only a few months away, now.

“I would say Destin is the far end date for making a decision. We’d like to back that up, the sooner the better now that we have clarity around the expansion to 16 and the timing of that expansion is really helpful, as you can imagine, in making decisions,” Sankey explained.

“Knowing where the College Football Playoff is in ’24 is a helpful piece of information. Working with our TV partner will be a helpful piece of information.”

There are more questions to answer, though. This is a new model for the SEC and the league will need to iron out the details.

“And, looking trough, if you are in a single division, how do you break ties? Because you don’t have all the head-to-head matchups that you would in our current two-division model.”

Importantly, Sankey emphasized that nothing has been finalized, yet. However, this is most likely the direction that the league is going to go.

“And, I’ll say, lastly, that doesn’t mean other format ideas won’t pop back into the conversation over the next 60-90 days, but we worked really hard for the last year and a half to walk through every kind of possibility and figure out the why’s and then the what’s of a potential model.”