The SEC commissioner used the terms ‘fair and balanced’ when discussing his reasoning behind dropping divisions from future football scheduling.
The 2023 football season has yet to commence, but there is heavy talk about what the SEC will be like in 2024.
Oklahoma and Texas have just under a year until they move into the SEC, which has, of course, changed the way that football scheduling will occur. The conference released the 2024 conference slate for each program last month, with one glaring detail missing: divisional play.
The SEC will go without divisions beginning in 2024 and will send the top two teams in the conference to the SEC championship game. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey shared his reasoning behind the decision on Monday at SEC media days in Nashville.
When discussing the change, he used the terms “fair and balanced” liberally. By using this method, he hopes to see teams play other teams within the SEC more frequently. As an example, Auburn has not hosted Florida since 2011. Sankey believes that the issue will fade with divisions eliminated.
“Balance was rotating teams through with greater frequency,” Sankey said. “So I think plenty of people have written about a team may not see a team certainly for six years or may not go someplace for 12 years if they’re in another division. So that was balanced.”
When it comes to the fairness of the new schedule model, he says he hopes to give every program a challenging, yet manageable schedule.
“When we were going through the final filtering you’d say, wow, schedule A is tough, and then you’d be at schedule G and you’re like, that school has a tough schedule, and all the way through,” Sankey said. “There are 16 really challenging schedules.
Rivalry games are also an important part of the SEC, and Sankey says it will be a factor when it comes to the next move between an eight- and nine-game schedule.
“But there are some important, we’ll call them rivalry games, and we’re going to have to have a decision about do we play those every year or do we play some of them every other year?” Sankey said. “The eight-game format we can protect one on an annual basis and the other seven rotate. In the nine-game format, we know we can protect up to three, rotate the other six and achieve both that fairness and that balance issue.”
SEC media days continue through Thursday from Nashville’s Grand Hyatt Hotel.
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