As SEC spring meetings in Destin, Florida, continue this week, much of the discussion seems to be centered around hammering out a future scheduling model for when Oklahoma and Texas join the league in 2024.
Some — including commissioner Greg Sankey, it seems — are pushing for an expansion of the conference schedule from eight games to nine, a move several other conferences have already made.
There’s been pushback on that change, though, and it seems no decision has been made yet. On Wednesday, Sankey said those conversations are continuing. He said that if he, the presidents and the athletics directors can reach a “finish line” he’s prepared to announce and explain the decision this week.
“We’ll continue the conversation tomorrow with most of our athletics directors and our presidents,” Sankey said, per On3’s Kaiden Smith. “If we coalesce around a recommendation, we’re prepared to introduce that. As soon as we reach a finish line, I’ll end up announcing, explaining that in a pretty timely manner. Thursday or Friday, you know, sooner the better.
“If we don’t come to an agreement, a conclusion either on short term or long term — and we have options. We don’t have to solve every one of our scheduling format questions for eternity right now. And remember that really in February, we learned of the ability for Oklahoma and Texas to move earlier. I’ve noted some complexities around that, certainly just walking away from 14 nonconference games, or we can go to nine. So that’s part of the conversation. A lot of healthy dialogue. I tend to think we’ll come to resolution on some key elements in the short term, continue talking long term.”
If the league opts to move to nine games, the schedule would likely feature three permanent opponents with the other six rotating. However, an eight-game model would likely on feature one permanent opponent.
In LSU’s case, we may have a decent idea who that opponent would be after Texas A&M athletics director Ross Bjork seemed to have let it slip this week.
Ross Bjork indicates LSU is A&M’s permanent football rival of SEC opts for 8-game schedule model. pic.twitter.com/4722NaKLmA
— Olin Buchanan (@olinbuchanan) May 31, 2023
For Sankey’s part, he still seems to think the discussions are progressing in a positive direction.
“I will say from my perspective, it’s been the kind of healthy conversation we ought to have as a conference. Lot of different perspectives. No need to raise the volume but continually, you know, ask the right questions and think about how we schedule our football games,” he said. “Also, how we announce the scheduling of our football games. You saw the NFL just three weeks ago, they make it an event. And last year we announced our schedule in mid-September. We’re already making news in football but a lot of pressure to get it out. So we’re trying to reconfigure that.”
It seems the league is still working through different scheduling possibilities, but it’s possible that LSU and the rest of the SEC members will have a better idea of what future scheduling will look like by the end of the week.
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