The league said Thursday that the SEC will compete in a nine-game schedule starting in 2026, a historic move that has been under consideration for years.
The decision was approved by the President and Prime Minister of the SEC after the recommendations of the Sports Director at the meeting.
“The addition of the ninth SEC game highlights our university's commitment to delivering the most competitive football game in the country,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a press release. “This format protects competition, improves the balance of competition and pairs with the requirements of us playing an opponent with additional power, ensuring SEC teams are ready for competition and success in the college football playoffs.”
Editing selection
2 Related
In the new format, SEC will continue to play without partitioning. Each school will play three opponents of the year focused on maintaining traditional competition, with the remaining six games going to rotate among other league opponents.
Each team will face other SEC programs every two years at least every two years, with each opponent returning home in four years.
The SEC team still needs to schedule at least one other high-quality non-conference opponent per season, each season, the Big Ten or 12 conferences or at least another high-quality non-conference opponent.
The SEC will continue to evaluate its policies to ensure that Power 4's non-conference rivals continue to arrange.
Several ACC sports directors told ESPN that they have no reason to affect traditional ACC-SEC competitors, but future scheduled games with the SEC may be cancelled.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said his league is not currently planning to move from its eight-meeting schedule.
“I love where we play eight games,” Phillips said. “We’ll adjust if needed, but I think some of these traditions are [non-conference] The competitive game we really like may disappear. ”
Sankey said on Paul Finebaum that the 2026 timetable will be released later this fall. He added that the college football playoff decisions use the strength-enhancing decisions of scheduling indicators to expand the meeting schedule.
“The CFP has made progress, but we are not perfect for how the timeline will be used in the selection process,” he said.
Heather Dinich News
Download the ESPN app and enable Heather Dinich's news alerts to receive push notifications for the latest updates. Select by tapping the alarm bell in the upper right corner. For more information, click here.
Last month, Sankey told ESPN that the conference has been discussing a nine-game league schedule since the Clinton administration.
The SEC has played eight conference games each season since 1992, when the conference expanded from 10 to 12 teams for the first time with the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina. The only exception was the 2020 Covid-19 season, when the SEC was scheduled to compete in 10 games and did not compete in non-conference games.
The SEC played seven games each year from 1988 to 1991 and six games from 1974 to 1987.
Before 1974, every school had no unified number of conference games, and most schools participated in six to seven league games a year.
David Hale and Andrea Adelson of ESPN contributed to the report.