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Sankey Shares SEC’s Stance of Nine Game Conference Slate
Nine game conference schedule could be in future of SEC although Sankey not completely sold on idea
There has been pushback in recent years by coaches within the SEC who oppose that the league drop one non-conference game but add another conference game instead.
Most coaches won’t come out from under anonymity due to likely embarrassment, it would give SEC fans reason to tune in an extra Saturday that would often be spent elsewhere when their team plays a FCS opponent. Adding a game may sound easy but he doesn’t want to see his teams lose out on bowl eligibility for the sake of playing a tougher schedule.
Commissioner @GregSankey says he’s still in favor of moving to a 9-game SEC football schedule “…but not at the expense of opportunity.” pic.twitter.com/Gbq0jneiTe
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) March 3, 2025
“So when you look at our path forward, we look at the next few months as being really important to gather information, to talk about either opportunities or obstacles that might be in the way, to the extent we can answer that,” Sankey said in his Monday appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show. “Like, what’s the priority of bowl qualification in the future? That’s still an important issue.”
Impact on 9-game Schedule
Just like this season, the SEC placed three teams into the College Football Playoff race with three other programs such as Alabama, South Carolina and Ole Miss all having valid arguments for bids. Winning games was also made a priority and each of those three teams lost more than two games last season.
“Trying to understand how the selection committee for the CFP made decisions is really important. And one of the issues in the room for our athletic directors is what seemed to matter most is the number to the right. The number of losses. And how do we understand what that means for our schedule moving forward? I’m one who said ‘I really think we ought to be trying to move to a 9-game conference schedule.’ I think that can be positive for a lot of reasons but not if that causes us to lose opportunities.”
In recent weeks, reports have surfaced of SEC and Big Ten leaders looking to add an extra two teams into the playoff field while also changing how teams are seeded. One major note to come out of the meeting was the possibility of guaranteed auto-bids to both Power Two Conference teams which could ultimately lead to a breakaway in the NCAA eventually.
