Decision on SEC schedule format could come soon

Now that the College Football Playoff Committee made it official Thursday by announcing the playoffs would expand to 12 teams, it appears the SEC is getting closer to making some final decisions on the league’s new scheduling format.

Although a single-division conference continues to be the focus, what has yet to be decided is whether a nine- or eight-game conference schedule will come into play once Texas and Oklahoma join the conference on July 1, 2025.

Speaking to reporters via a Zoom webinar Thursday, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said those decisions could come as early as 2023,

“I think probably even with you, I shared back in May, June, when we were in Destin that we were poised to make a decision, but felt there were some important data points,” Sankey said. “At this point, we would look to the first few months of 2023 as the opportunity to refocus. I learned during the COVID summer of 2020 not to set hard-and-fast deadlines because we may want some flexibility in setting a specific finish point for our conversation.

“We have a need to move forward, though. I would anticipate in the general sense sooner rather than later those decisions will come to conclusion.”

As for the 12-team playoff format that will begin with the 2024-25 season, Sankey said the SEC welcomes the opportunity for more of its teams to be able to compete for a national crown.

“I would anticipate the opportunity for three, perhaps four of our teams’ totals, between the conference champion and the at-large teams to be fully in the mix on an annual basis,” said Sankey, who noted that if the playoffs were 12 teams this year, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee would each have qualified.

The SEC Championship game is apparently going nowhere.

While some suggest having a championship could potentially knock a school out of the top 12, Sankey sees the opposite as being true.

“For us, we've established something here in Atlanta that's very special. There still is a need to determine a conference champion just as we do in every other sport,” Sankey said. “And I think there are a number of reasons why conference championship games will remain viable even as we go through this transition into an expanded Playoff.”

In regards to the single-division league, while that remains the likely route for the conference, a final decision has yet to be made.

“The focus is on a single-division format. That doesn't mean there isn't the potential for introduction of another model remaining in divisions, altering division format,” Sankey said. “I don't think this quad or pod model had a lot of interest once we dug into the details. You'll recall probably last year at this time I made great news by saying we did look at a format that has our own playoff involved, that you use part of November to advance teams to determine a conference champion that could then play forward. That went into the file folder pretty quickly.”