SEC votes for 8-game conference football schedule beginning in 2024, will reevaluate in 2025
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — The SEC will play an eight-game conference football schedule once Oklahoma and Texas officially become members in 2024, but it will reevaluate moving to a nine-game schedule before the 2025 season.
After more than a year of debate, the 14 university presidents voted unanimously in favor of preserving the eight-game schedule during the SEC spring meetings Thursday. The conference has not determined a specific scheduling structure regarding permanent or rotating opponents due to the one-year nature of the decision. The 2024 schedule will be set June 14.
Because of the questions involving the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, which also begins in 2024, the SEC plans to revisit the scheduling model in 2025. Officials do not know how the CFP selection committee will value wins and losses versus strength of schedule under the new format and whether nine conference games could disadvantage the SEC.
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“The biggest question I have is … how does the Playoff look at it?” Auburn coach Hugh Freeze said Tuesday. “If you're an SEC opponent and you're really quality and you’ve won a lot of good games, but you drop two to top teams or a third one, do you still get in when the Playoff expands? I think all of those things are unknown, so ultimately I think we as coaches just say hey, give us our marching orders. Tell us what it is and what is best for our conference and hopefully it aligns with what's best for our schools."
As expected, the conference also voted to abolish the East and West divisions for football, opting for a single-standings model that will send the two teams with the best record to the SEC Championship game. In 2022, SEC East rivals Georgia and Tennessee had the best records, but LSU faced the Bulldogs for the conference title as the top team in the West.
The SEC is one of two Power 5 conferences to preserve an eight-game schedule, alongside the ACC, while the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 have all moved to a nine-game model. As part of Thursday's announcement, the SEC will continue requiring its teams to play at least one nonconference Power 5 opponent.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: SEC votes for 8-game football schedule, will reevaluate in 2025
