DESTIN, Fla. (AP) The Southeastern Conference’s slogan, ”It just means more,” could soon refer to the number of football games the league schedules.
SEC coaches and athletic directors have been meeting this week at a resort on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Atop the agenda is whether the conference schedule should expand from eight to nine games when the league itself grows from 14 to 16 teams with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma.
Whether a decision comes by the time the spring meetings wrap up Friday is still to be determined – and seeming more unlikely at the end of Wednesday’s sessions.
”We’ve got some questions still to answer,” Commissioner Greg Sankey said. ”We’ve got more work to do.”
The SEC presidents, who have final say on schedule change, meet Thursday with the ADs. Sankey said the executive committee would be updated on the discussions and the conference was in no rush to make a decision, but would not commit to whether the group would vote.
”Wait till Friday,” he said.
Even those in the conference who have generally been supportive of playing more league games acknowledge it’s a move that comes with potential complications.
”Eight has worked very well for our conference,” Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said Wednesday. ”You’ve seen how we’ve scheduled (for future seasons) and we’ve added Power Five, Autonomy Five, games to our schedule. Now we did that based off of thinking we were going to continue to play eight games.”
The scheduling model choices have been whittled down to two: Nine games with three permanent rivals for each team and six opponents that would rotate over a four-year cycle or a model more similar to what the SEC uses now – eight games with one annual rivalry and the other seven opponents rotating.
Regardless of the number of games the SEC plays among itself, Sankey said this week the league is heading toward scrapping its divisional format when Oklahoma and Texas jump on board.
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