Will a football scheduling decision finally come next week at SEC meetings? Stay tuned
More than 15 weeks after the SEC announced that Oklahoma and Texas would start league play in 2024, it will hold its spring meetings starting Tuesday.
What that will look like in terms of coming to a decision on football scheduling still may or may not be determined next week at the Hilton Sandestin Beach resort.
Whether to move to a nine-game conference schedule or stay at eight games has been debated for months.
Georgia president Jere Morehead was asked Thursday if he expected the schedule format would be decided next week when the presidents, chancellors, athletic directors and coaches gather.
“I am ready for it to be done,” Morehead said after a UGA athletic board meeting in Greensboro. “We’ve talked about it and talked about it. I’m not sure it will get completed. We’ll see. There’s just a lot of dynamics still playing around on that issue.”
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Nine games would bring more inventory in the SEC’s TV deal with ESPN and ABC — valued in December 2020 at $300 million by the Sports Business Journal — which would put the league in position to bring in more revenue from its broadcast partners.
“I may be saying more than Commissioner (Greg) Sankey would want me to say, but obviously if you go to a nine-game schedule, you have to be compensated for going to a nine-game schedule,” Morehead said. “There’s still some dynamics that have to play out with our media partners.”
Divisions are expected to go away, but coming to a decision on how a 16-team leagues will schedule football hasn’t been easy.
A nine-game schedule would have every SEC team with three annual fixed opponents and six rotating.
Am eight-game schedule would go to one fixed opponent and eight rotating.
“I can go either way on that,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said on May 10 before a golf event outside of Birmingham. “I think either format is going to allow us to cycle through the SEC much faster. So there won’t be a four-year window that you don’t play everybody home and away either way. So in the grand scheme of things, what are we really talking about? I think people are looking for something to debate about, but if you’re going to play everybody in the SEC in four years home and away, the two methodologies were going about are not that vastly different.”
Georgia is expected to play Florida either with an eight-game or nine-game schedule.
The other two fixed opponents in a nine-game schedule are likely to be Auburn and Kentucky.
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“As it relates to the schedule, we’re not going to comment publicly on that right now,” Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks. “With respect to the SEC. We have meetings next week and you’ll find out more about that when that’s over. We keep the SEC first and we’ve got internal meetings we’ve got to have and us being public about that doesn’t help those meetings we’re about to have.”
As for other schools, Kentucky and South Carolina are thought to be in the eight-game camp while Texas A&M, Florida, and LSU are among those that are throught to favor nine.
Alabama coach Nick Saban has voiced displeasure with the three rotating opponents in a nine-game schedule for the Crimson Tide—Auburn, LSU and Tennessee.
Nonconference games in 2024 would need to be adjusted if the SEC goes to a nine-game schedule. Georgia has dates set with Clemson, Georgia Tech, Tennessee Tech and UMass.
The SEC announced in March it had determined scheduling for the 2024-2025 academic year for baseball, gymnastics, men’s and women’s swimming and diving after already having approved men’s and women’s basketball, soccer and men’s and women’s tennis and softball.
Maybe football will join the list by the end of next week.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: UGA president Jere Morehead on 'dynamics' holding up the SEC schedule
