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The SEC will maintain an eight-game schedule for the 2025 season, with each team playing the same opponents as in 2024, but with reversed locations, the conference announced Wednesday.
For example, Georgia will host Alabama, Texas, Ole Miss and Kentucky, its four road games in 2024. This format also means Texas will host Texas A&M, Oklahoma will travel to Tennessee and Ole Miss will go to Oklahoma.
“We continue to monitor changes in college sports as they relate to future scheduling,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement. “Continuing our current format for the 2025 season provides additional time to understand the impact of the changes occurring around us as we determine the appropriate long-term plan for SEC football programming.”
That approach is another sign that the conference still has its sights set on expanding to a nine-game schedule, with the eight-game schedules in 2024-25 merely a bridge. Dates and times will be announced later.
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After the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, the prospect of reaching nine games seemed inevitable for the 2024 season. But concerns from some programs about bowl eligibility, coupled with the fact that most schools do not receive more money from ESPN, led to the adoption of what was considered a stopgap: the eight-game 2024 schedule.
Now that has been extended by a year and each team will play the same opponents.
The SEC has considered two schedule formats, both of which eliminate divisions:
- An eight-game format where each team has an annual opponent and then rotates the rest of the conference.
- A nine-game format where each team has three annual rivals and then rotates the rest.
In each format, each team would play every other team at least twice every four years, home and away. (Aside from neutral site games like Oklahoma-Texas and Florida-Georgia).
But the eight-game schedule for 2024 is believed to keep each team’s three likely annual rivals if the SEC reaches nine. The SEC has never publicly confirmed what those three annual rivals would be, but sources from different schools have said that their three probables were on their calendars for 2024. In the case of Georgia, for example, they were Florida, Auburn and Kentucky.
However, some within the conference hope to extract more money from ESPN by moving to a nine-game schedule. But the more it goes on, and with the financial uncertainty at ESPN and its parent company Disney, the more they are resigned to having to make a decision separate from what ESPN decides.
There is also general uncertainty about what the university landscape will look like, whether it be further realignment or something else. Clemson joining Florida State in suing the ACC to get out of the vesting is yet another problem.
Therefore, opting for a temporary schedule for 2025 is the SEC’s way of continuing to maintain flexibility. And he didn’t want his annual spring meetings in Destin, Florida, in late May to again be dominated by calendar discussion. Therefore, you are putting the decision aside to weigh the more important issues before you.
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(Photo: Jeffrey Vest/Getty Images)