There’s an abundance of changes coming to the SEC in 2024 but a nine-game conference football schedule isn’t one of them. The league will play an eight-game SEC schedule in 2024 before deciding a permanent schedule model, the SEC announced Thursday evening.
The decision comes out of the SEC spring meetings in Destin where the conference’s 14 football coaches, athletic director’s and presidents met along with the leadership brass from Oklahoma and Texas to discuss changes to the league when the two top Big 12 schools join.
The SEC had one major decision to make on the future of its football schedule, whether to stay with an eight-game schedule or add a ninth conference game. The two proposals included an eight-game schedule where each team has one permanent opponent they play every season and seven rotation opponents every other year or a nine-game schedule with three permanent opponents and six rotations opponents every other year.
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For months, the nine-game schedule was the perceived lock with the debates coming around who each team’s three permanent opponents would be. But the pendulum shifted in the last month with a handful of coaches, including Alabama’s Nick Saban who publicly complained about the Crimson Tide’s proposed permanent opponents, declared their preference for an eight-game schedule.
The result? The SEC kicking the can down the road another season while they play an eight-game 2024 conference schedule that commissioner Greg Sankey said would balance fairness while trying to preserve rivalry games.
After the 2024 season, the league will once again analyze the future of its football scheduling and hopefully come to a permanent schedule.
The SEC’s hope was that ESPN would fork over more money for a nine-game SEC schedule and the matchups that would bring the network but the world wide leader in sports has not budged to this point.
The SEC will release schedules for the 2024 footballs season in just under two weeks: June 14. Rocky Top Insider will have complete coverage of Tennessee football’s 2024 schedule release.
