The Big Ten can help give the SEC the leverage to solve its scheduling problem

When Big Ten and SEC athletic directors meet in Nashville on Thursday, they’ll certainly talk about big-picture topics. Project Rudy, the latest no-bad-ideas session concept to emerge from a private equity firm, may inspire some conversation.

It makes sense that the ADs of the two wealthiest conferences will discuss how their leagues can further dominate college sports, but remember that none of the huge-picture stuff can happen until everyone’s current media rights deals end. In the case of the SEC, that’s June 2034. They can start planning ahead, but that’s still a long time.

The talks certainly will include discussion of items that can be enacted much sooner. Specifically, these are the questions that the leagues can answer much sooner if the talks are productive.

How many conference games will SEC teams play starting in 2026?

Will those teams annually play the teams of a particular conference whose name rhymes with Tig Ben in the non-conference schedule?

The Big Ten can help the SEC with a problem that has emerged in part because the Big Ten has been better at negotiating TV deals than the SEC. Meanwhile, each can help the other improve its offering.

The reason the SEC hasn’t announced a conference scheduling format beyond 2026 is because much of the league really wants to move to a nine-game conference schedule. This would allow rivals to play more frequently, and it would make season-ticket packages more varied and attractive to fans. 

But not all of the league wants it. Some schools still want to schedule for bowl eligibility. Plus, even the schools that want a nine-game league schedule don’t want to add that game unless Disney, which owns all of the SEC’s media rights, pays more for the privilege of televising those games on ABC and the ESPN family of networks.

The Big Ten can help the bulk of the SEC get what it wants from a schedule standpoint and provide a leverage point that could force Disney to cough up more money. All it has to do is demand that the SEC move to a nine-game schedule (like the Big Ten has) in return for a non-conference scheduling alliance that matches the teams from each league annually. Given the sorry state of non-conference scheduling at most schools, this would improve the product in both leagues.

With a 16-team league with no divisions, the easiest way to create an eight-game conference schedule is to have one permanent opponent and play each of the other 14 teams twice every four years. With Oklahoma and Texas becoming teams No. 15 and 16 this season, the SEC created a bespoke eight-game league schedule for 2024 and then just flipped the home and away teams for 2025. Beyond that remains up in the air.

The problem with that particular eight-game format is that in a league where a lot of teams have long histories against one another, it forces some games that should be annual rivalries into every-other-year or twice-every-four-years situations (depending on how the schedule rotates). I’ve written multiple times that everyone involved should be fired if Texas versus Texas A&M isn’t an annual football game. Keeping that eight-game model going forward also would eliminate Auburn–Georgia (the Deep South’s oldest rivalry, played 129 times) and Alabama-Tennessee (played 105 times) as annual events. Ditto for Florida–Tennessee and Alabama–LSU, which flourished as rivalries during the divisional era.

A 16-team league that plays a nine-game conference schedule can assign three permanent opponents and then rotate the other 12 teams through the remaining six schedule slots twice every four years.  

One reason the SEC divisional schedules got so stale was because of a concerted effort to protect Auburn-Georgia and Tennessee-Alabama, so it would be strange to see them just abandoned. And again — this cannot be said enough — it would be business malpractice to not have Texas and Texas A&M play every year.

But that’s probably not fair, because it also would be malpractice to give Disney even better games without forcing Disney to pay up for the privilege of broadcasting those games. SEC leaders were so eager to stick it to CBS for not renegotiating its steal of a deal a decade ago that the SEC sold its best game of the week to Disney three years before the CBS contract expired. (This is the first season of the new deal.) In the meantime, the rights bubble didn’t burst. The SEC watched CBS and NBC pay the Big Ten similar money for packages that don’t hold a candle to what the SEC sold Disney. 

The Mouse got a great deal, and it’s understandable that the SEC wouldn’t want to make that deal any better without getting more money in return. But the SEC probably needs to move to nine conference games to produce the best product it can. This makes it tough to negotiate.

That’s where the Big Ten can help the SEC. The Big Ten’s current media rights deals keep the league’s teams off Disney-owned networks unless they play at the home stadium of an ACC, Big 12 or SEC team or in the College Football Playoff. Disney paid a handsome price to get the CFP, where it will televise games featuring Big Ten teams. The real value is getting Michigan and Ohio State — the sport’s two most bankable brands — in the regular season. Michigan is scheduled to go to Oklahoma next year and Texas in 2027; Ohio State is scheduled to go to Alabama in 2028. What if one of those was guaranteed to play on the campus of an SEC school every year? And what if Oregon and Penn State and USC and Wisconsin and Michigan State also played in an SEC stadium every other year and hosted an SEC team every other year? The way to guarantee that those teams do occasionally play regular-season games on Disney-owned networks is to help the SEC make a scheduling agreement with the Big Ten.

Ohio State at Georgia or Michigan at LSU will do massive numbers on ABC or ESPN. Those are the games a network wants. Samford-Florida and South Alabama-LSU and the like are considered filler by comparison. Meanwhile, ESPN also would get more of Oklahoma-Tennessee and Texas-Auburn while knowing it would get the classics such as Auburn-Georgia, Alabama-Tennessee and Texas-Texas A&M every year. 

Ideally, the leagues could set the games every two years or so to ensure the best teams play the best teams and the teams in the middle play the the teams in the middle in order to produce the most competitive games. This stuff doesn’t need to be scheduled 10 years out the way it has been. This way, if Jedd Fisch turns Washington into an annual Big Ten power, the Huskies might draw Alabama or Georgia or Texas. Or if Hugh Freeze succeeds in his roster rebuild at Auburn, the Tigers would get Ohio State or Oregon.

The nine-game model is the only one that makes sense going forward as long as the SEC intends to remain at 16 teams. But yes, Disney should have to pay more for that.

Perhaps offering to sprinkle some Buckeyes, Wolverines, Nittany Lions, Ducks and Trojans into the mix will inspire Mickey Mouse to reach for his wallet.