SEC instructs Georgia, Tennessee to cancel upcoming series with OU

News on the OU-Texas move to the SEC could be coming soon with the SEC instructing Georgia, Tennessee to cancel upcoming matchups with OU.

We’ve got something big here, Sooners fans. The SEC has instructed Georgia and Tennessee to not play their upcoming games against Oklahoma. The Bulldogs were scheduled to play the Sooners in Norman next season and the Volunteers were originally scheduled to come to Norman in 2020.

This points to one thing: The SEC plans to have the Sooners in the SEC next year. With a few dates being thrown around, there wasn’t really a concrete answer on when OU and Texas planned to leave the Big 12, although 2025 was when the Big 12 media rights deal expired.

Pete Thamel of ESPN broke the news.

ESPN Chairman James Pitaro has said that the Sooners and Longhorns will remain where they are until 2025 as well.

Houston, BYU, UCF and Cincinnati are scheduled to join the Big 12 in July of next year, and while it was an interesting idea, it was always hard to see the Sooners and Longhorns sticking around to play in a 14-team Big 12.

Here is the official statement from the SEC.

The Southeastern Conference has directed the University of Georgia and the University of Tennessee to postpone scheduled football games versus Oklahoma because the transition of Oklahoma into the SEC will not allow for the involved institutions to fulfill their respective contractual non-conference home-and-home appearance obligations.

Because the second non-conference game in each of the Georgia-Oklahoma and Tennessee-Oklahoma series is scheduled to take place after Oklahoma joins the SEC in 2025, the Conference is directing the postponement of the Georgia at Oklahoma game in 2023 and the Oklahoma at Tennessee game in 2024 until such time that those matchups become part of the Conference rotation of games in future years.

Brent Venables would go into the SEC with a valuable year of head coaching experience and hopefully back-to-back top 10 recruiting classes.

This story is only the first domino to fall. There will be many more things to come out before a move date is made official. Until then, the Sooners and Longhorns are in the Big 12.

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