SEC temporarily keeps 8-game conference football schedule for 2024
The Southeastern Conference will play eight league football games in 2024 when it expands to 16 teams with the additions of the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns — but beyond that, the schedule model is still to be determined according to an Associated Press report.
On the penultimate day of the SEC’s spring meetings Thursday, commissioner Greg Sankey revealed that the conference’s university presidents unanimously voted to implement a short-term solution to a scheduling conundrum that has been debated for more than a year.
Leaders from the conference’s member schools have considered both a nine-game conference schedule that would include three annual rivalry games and an eight-game model with one annual rivalry game.
“Our long-term options are fully open,” Sankey said.
The commish appeared very confident that the long-term scheduling model will be hashed out before he and his colleagues return to the Florida Panhandle this time next year.
“Nobody wants to go through this every year,” Sankey said.
Football matchups for the 2024 season will be released on June 14 on the SEC Network, without exact dates. Sankey said traditional rivalries such as Alabama–Auburn and Mississippi-Mississippi State would be honored.
“Are you asking me: Are we not going to play the Iron Bowl and Egg Bowl? I won’t be the commissioner if that happens,” Sankey said.
He would not commit to a renewal of the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry — which has not been played since the Aggies left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2012.
“I’m pretty confident they’ll play before (2026) though,” Sankey said.
SEC leaders had already said they were planning to abandon the two-division structure the conference has had since 1991 when Texas and Oklahoma relocate from the Big 12. The top two teams in the standings will meet in the league championship in 2024 for the first time in the conference’s history.
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