Greg Sankey goes in depth on complexities of SEC schedule change

With the 2023 SEC spring meetings set to begin next week in Destin, Fla., SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is getting ahead of the news a bit by discussing some of the SEC schedule options on the table for the conference.

The league has reportedly debated between an eight-game and nine-game single-division format, one that would eliminate the traditional SEC East and SEC West designations.

Sankey discussed some of the challenges in creating an equitable schedule.

“What goes on in the meeting room should stay in the meeting room,” Sankey said. “I’ll talk big picture, when we added the two (new teams) my challenge to our membership was to engage in what I call “blue sky” thinking. Take a step back, think in an unencumbered way in what’s optimal.

“And that caused us to just look through 40-plus different scheduling models. We’ve coalesced around moving to a single division. One of the realities is not everybody’s going to play the same strength of schedule every year. That’s just impossible.”

The reason for that, as Sankey pointed out in an exclusive interview with Greg McElroy on ESPN’s College Football channel on YouTube, is that teams may not play the same opponents in a given year.

With any given SEC schedule, a powerhouse team naturally won’t be able to face itself, Sankey said, leading it to possibly have a weaker strength of schedule on paper than other teams in the league.

“There’s no uniformity,” Sankey said. “What we will do is narrow the band of disparity around strength of schedule as we look at the single-division model. I think that’s really smart. And then the question is the number of games, how many games happen annually. Games will happen at least semi-annually regardless of the number of games we have. And that’s the work to be done in our spring meetings.”

Regardless of whether the SEC schedule ends up at eight conference games or nine, traditional annual opponents are likely to be loosened such that all schools face each other a little more regularly than in the current format.

“There are different opinions, but I really commend our membership for wanting to be deliberate, to think through, to continually ask for information,” Sankey said. “Who knows, something new may come up next week that could delay us. But we’re at least poised, which I said last year, to make a scheduling decision in the sport of football.

“I’ll also note we don’t just play football in this league as the TV behind me reminds us. We have to figure out scheduling formats for every one of our 21 championship sports. I think the only one really kind of hanging out there right now is what our future baseball tournament looks like in two years. How many teams will be participating along with the number of football games in our football format.”

In terms of football, though, the league could move away from its traditional eight-game SEC schedule format.

Sankey noted that’s a fairly modern thing anyway.

One major consideration for the league is making sure the addition of Oklahoma and Texas is conducted with as little financial backbite as possible.

“Eight’s our modern tradition. People forget this conference used to play six,” Sankey said. “There was a time when you would count six games that weren’t all conference games back in the ’70s. Our standardized approach is a mid-80s, late-80s and beyond. So we’ve been with eight.

“One of the complexities we have to sort out is the early movement of Oklahoma and Texas does impact non-conference scheduling. What we don’t want to do is create a bunch of payments or short-term cancellations, so that’s part of our learning experience. We’re also curious about what exactly, precisely, happens with the College Football Playoff.”