Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey stated Thursday that SEC football plans to eradicate its two-division construction for scheduling as soon as Texas and Oklahoma join the convention on July 1, 2025.
The SEC presently consists of two seven-team divisions, East and West. Oklahoma and Texas, which is able to develop into two of the westernmost faculties within the convention, make persevering with that system a problem for schedules.
Sankey stated the SEC is ready on different elements, like potential College Football Playoff enlargement and the Big Ten media settlement, to make remaining scheduling selections. The Big Ten has additionally expanded west, including present Pac-12 members Southern California and UCLA for 2024.
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Sankey didn’t elaborate on whether or not that additionally implies that divisions would cease getting used for convention standings. The East and West division champions presently meet within the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta. This yr’s matchup is between Georgia and LSU on Saturday, Dec. 4.
Sankey stated the 2025 schedule and past will probably be conference-wide, permitting for applications which have by no means met to play. He famous that in the course of the 2022 football season, Missouri traveled to Auburn for the primary time since becoming a member of the convention in 2012.
“We right now are not thinking about maintaining a two-division format for football scheduling in the SEC,” Sankey stated. “It would potentially be one single division with the idea that we want to rotate our teams through our campuses more frequently. We have big brands with big interest and large following … that want to go to places like Fayetteville, Arkansas or have their fans come to Columbia, South Carolina.”
Sankey stated the transfer to put off divisions is inspired by the convention’s success in the course of the 2020 season, throughout which SEC groups performed all 10 video games towards convention foes resulting from COVID-19 restrictions. Each workforce performs eight convention matchups per season beneath the present system, however Sankey that would improve to 9 after enlargement.
“During the pandemic we played 10 conference games and had on our SEC Network the highest viewership we had ever experienced,” Sankey stated. “We drew people in by playing each other with greater frequency.”
Texas and Oklahoma, which presently compete within the Big 12, introduced in 2021 they would depart to join the SEC. The transfer is not going to occur till 2025 after the Big 12’s media rights deal expires.
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