Greg Sankey: Nine-game SEC schedule had 'a lot of issues'

One of the biggest questions around the SEC this offseason didn’t have anything to do with the season that starts in just a few weeks. Instead, it was looking ahead to 2024 when the league adds two new teams, meaning a new schedule model would be on the way.

The debate went on. Divisions were going away, but would the SEC play eight games or nine games? It ultimately chose the former, and commissioner Greg Sankey explained why at Media Days on Tuesday.

Sankey used similar arguments to the ones he made shortly after the announcement following the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin. At the time, he left the door open for a potential nine-game model down the road, but the conference appears fine staying at eight despite adding Texas and Oklahoma to make it a 16-team league.

“There were a lot of issues,” Sankey said at Media Days about the nine-game schedule. “When you think about what we’re going to see next year, we have expansion, we add two historically prominent football programs in Oklahoma and Texas. And not only prominent, but successful. We have the College Football Playoff changes, lingering questions about what that may or may not mean. Discussions about non-conference scheduling. When I was asked in Destin about timing for the ’25 decision, we could go out to Destin next year. The earlier we do that, the less pain we cause for the discontinuation of non-conference games.

“One of the bigger elements was that non-conference game issue. Now, part of the motivation, I think, going forward is I really think our eight-game schedule is pretty remarkable. Like when we were going through the final filtering you’d say, wow, schedule A is tough, and then you’d be at schedule G and you’re like, that school has got a tough schedule and all the way through. There are 16 really challenging schedules.”

One of Sankey’s biggest priorities was maintaining some of the SEC’s biggest rivalries, both old and new. Many of them — including Auburn vs. Alabama, Florida vs. Georgia and Texas vs. Oklahoma — will happen in 2024 under the division-less model.

As the schedule conversation evolves, Sankey said rivalries will play a big part in the discussions.

“There are some important, we’ll call them rivalry games, and we’re going to have to have a decision about do we play those every year or do we play some of them every other year?” Sankey said. “The eight-game format we can protect one on an annual basis and the other seven rotate. In the nine-game format we know we can protect up to three, rotate the other six and achieve both that fairness and that balance issue. That’ll be right in front of us again.”