The future of the SEC's scheduling format is one of those stories that you either care absolutely nothing about, and thus you're highly annoyed by the frequency with which it's discussed, or you care about a lot. And since you're here, here it goes.
Ross Dellenger has an update at SI on Friday, stemming from a conversation with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey during the College Football Playoff meetings this week in Dallas. Sankey hopes the conference will come to a decision by the league's spring meetings next month in Destin. The SEC revealed its 2023 schedule in September 2022, so it's not quite a hard deadline, but Destin is the optimal time to make a decision. They've batted the idea around for more than a year at this point.
About that decision, it doesn't seem set in stone at all.
A quick refresher: it's all but guaranteed the SEC will eliminate divisions, as the Pac-12 has done and the ACC will do starting this year. The choice is between a 1-7 format, where teams play one annual rival and rotate through the other 14 opponents on a biannual basis, or a 3-6 format, where each team plays three annual opponents and rotates through the other 12 every-other year. In both formats, every SEC team faces every other SEC team every other year, and hosts every SEC team at least once every four years.
However, obviously, the 3-6 format increases the SEC schedule from eight games to nine, thereby removing a non-conference game and doling out an extra loss to eight SEC teams. The 1-7 format does not do that, but it causes important games like Auburn-Georgia, Alabama-Tennessee, LSU-Alabama, and Texas-Texas A&M to not be played half the time.
For many, the answer is obvious: to play as many SEC games as possible. But if you're an AD of -- and let's not name names here -- a "middle class" SEC school... isn't your preference obvious, too? Your fans don't get a dividend check if ESPN ups its ante to televise the eight additional SEC games. Your fans don't care if Auburn-Georgia play every year or every other year. They care about winning as many games as possible.
Dellenger writes:
League administrators are believed to be split on the issue—a divide that, for the most part, is along revenue-generating lines. Many of the conference’s smaller-budget schools are in favor of remaining at eight games, and many of the bigger-budget programs support a move to nine.
This week, Sankey said not every school has made a decision on a format. The league office has worked to provide materials, data and analysis to assist athletic directors in their decision, which Sankey said is part of the league’s “regulatory structure” and thus must be approved through a conference vote of the 14 members. Texas and Oklahoma do not receive a vote, though their school administrators have been heavily involved in the scheduling discussions.
The best interest of the conference is clear: it's not getting as many teams as possible into lower-tier bowl games, it's playing Auburn-Georgia, Texas-Texas A&M and the others as often as possible... even if that's not in the best interest in a bloc of schools who have a say on the matter.
This is just me reading the tea leaves, but if I were a betting man I'd put my money on a 3-6 format passing with a compromise that the conference no longer requires its teams to play a Power 5 opponent in non-conference and ESPN compensates the conference and its members accordingly.
But we'll see. We've still got a few more weeks (or months) to breathlessly follow or dutifully ignore this story.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.