2. December 12th is going to be crazy
Forgive the breaking of the no-COVID-19 bubble to all of this, but to keep it hopeful and fun, let’s hope and assume that everyone is fine and healthy and the SEC gets its full season of football in without any major hiccups.
But what about 2020 would suggest that this is all going to be smooth?
– 2020 SEC Predictions For Every Game
Dog the Big Ten all you want for how it handled its football business over the last few weeks, but its schedule was smart. It had the big games early, with the idea that if they had to be played later, they could be fit into any one of the open dates built into the overall plan.
The SEC doesn’t have that.
Every SEC team has just one open date, and they’re all in the middle of the campaign. Arkansas, Mississippi State, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt are off on October 24th, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are off on October 31st, and Alabama, Auburn, Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss and Missouri are off on November 7th.
Those open dates in the middle of the year can be used in case any of the games over the first half of the campaign have to be moved, but overall there’s not a whole lot of wiggle room with ten games jammed into 11 weeks.
But here’s the real problem – Auburn vs. Alabama is on November 26th. So are LSU vs. Texas A&M and Kentucky vs. Florida. If for any reason any of those can’t go off as normal, there’s only one shot left at a make-up date, and that’s the open date of December 12th – the week before the SEC Championship on December 19th.
Also missing any possible rescheduling until December 12th? Florida vs. Georgia, Alabama vs. LSU, Auburn vs. Texas A&M, and Florida vs. Tennessee.
Long story short, there’s almost no flexibility. That means the potential for two things, and both could happen. 1) December 12th is full of big games that couldn’t be played earlier, and/or 2) the SEC Championship gets moved to the day after Christmas so the conference can fit in needed make-up games on the 12th and the 19th.