On Thursday, the SEC introduced that it’ll proceed enjoying eight league games for the 2024 season in spite of Texas and Oklahoma expanding club to 16 groups. This determination is made whilst briefly pausing the long-term conversations about whether or not to building up its intraconference agenda. The one-year agenda will even take away the divisional standings. Instead, the league’s most sensible two groups will face every different within the SEC Championship Game on the season’s finish.
The SEC had basically been cut up into East and West divisions since 1992. With the single-standings layout, all league techniques will face every different no less than two instances (domestic, away) in a four-year length, without reference to whether or not the SEC in the end makes a decision on an eight- or nine-game conference agenda someday. This is regarded as development as some SEC groups have long past up to ten years with out home-and-away conferences towards a unmarried opponent.
The eight games will likely be randomly assigned according to “fairness and balanced,” in accordance to commissioner Greg Sankey. He provides that conventional rivalries, reminiscent of Alabama vs. Auburn and Florida vs. Georgia, will likely be regarded as as smartly.
Beyond the eight conference games, SEC groups are mandated to play a minimum of one nonconference Power Five opponent from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, or Pac-12 (or a significant impartial) in 2024. Fifteen of 16 techniques have already got the sort of sport scheduled. Oklahoma had up to now agreed to a sequence with Georgia that was once canceled once the Sooners joined the conference.
The SEC Presidents and Chancellors authorized the agenda layout, which won a advice from the league’s athletic administrators throughout the 2023 SEC spring conferences. Although representatives from Texas and Oklahoma have been provide, they weren’t eligible to vote.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey states that “Creating a one-year schedule will provide a longer on-ramp to manage football scheduling around existing nonconference commitments of our members. It will also provide additional time to understand the impact of an expanded College Football Playoff and engage with our media partners as we determine the appropriate long-term plan for SEC football scheduling. During this time of change, our fans will continue to enjoy traditional rivalries and begin to see new matchups presented by the addition of two historically successful football programs to the SEC.”
The SEC will grasp a primetime particular on SEC Network to announce every workforce’s 2024 combatants on June 14. The stumbling blocks of shifting to a nine-game conference agenda have been too giant to triumph over at this juncture, basically as a result of the uncertainties surrounding ESPN’s willingness to pay for a 9th sport, the have an effect on on College Football Playoff and bowl eligibility, and the truth that nearly all of faculties wondered the advantages of enjoying an extra sport.
Sankey has no considerations about grievance of the SEC’s determination to keep at eight. “Nobody’s shying away from anything. We just didn’t add another game in a time of transition,” he mentioned.