Ross Dellenger at Sports Illustrated reported that the SEC is considering continuing with an eight-game football schedule after Oklahoma and Texas join the league in 2024. Nearly everyone, myself included, expected the conference to go with a nine-game schedule, so what gives?
First of all, it’s being phrased as a temporary one-year deal. It’s a stopgap, in other words, not (yet) a longterm plan.
We’ve been here before. When the SEC expanded to 14 teams in 2012, the first two years’ of schedules were bespoke creations. The official rotation that teams have been playing ever since didn’t begin until 2014.