SEC officially sticking with 8-game schedule for 2025: Source

The SEC is sticking with an eight-game schedule for the 2025 season, with each team playing the same opponents as 2024, but with locations being flipped, the conference announced Wednesday.

For instance, Georgia will host Alabama, Texas, Ole Miss and Kentucky, the four away games it has in 2024. This format also means Texas will host Texas A&M, Oklahoma will travel to Tennessee and Ole Miss will go to Oklahoma.

“We continue to monitor changes across college sports as they relate to future scheduling,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement. “Continuing with our current format for the 2025 season provides additional time to understand the impact of the changes happening around us as we determine the appropriate long-term plan for SEC football scheduling.”

That approach is another sign the conference still has an eye on expanding to a nine-game schedule, with the eight-game schedules in 2024-25 as simply a bridge. Dates and times will be announced at a later date.

After the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, the prospect of going to nine games seemed inevitable for the 2024 season. But concerns from some programs about bowl eligibility, coupled with most schools not getting more money from ESPN, led to adopting what was considered a stopgap — the eight-game schedule for 2024.

Now that’s been extended a year, with each team playing the same opponents.

The SEC has considered two schedule formats, both of which eliminate divisions:

• An eight-game format where each team has one annual rival, then rotates the rest of the conference.
• A nine-game format where each team has three annual rivals, then rotates the rest.

In each format, every team would play everyone else at least twice every four years, home and away. (Other than neutral-site games such as Oklahoma-Texas and Florida-Georgia.)

But the eight-game 2024 schedule is believed to keep each team’s three probable annual rivals if the SEC goes to nine. The SEC has never publicly confirmed what those three annual rivals would be, but sources at different schools have said their three probables were on their 2024 schedules. In Georgia’s case, for instance, that was Florida, Auburn and Kentucky.

However, some within the conference hope to extract more money from ESPN for going to a nine-game schedule. But the longer it goes, and with financial uncertainty at ESPN and its parent Disney, more are resigned to having to make a decision separate from what ESPN decides.

There is also the overall uncertainty about what the college landscape will look like, whether that’s further realignment or anything else. Clemson joining Florida State in suing the ACC to get out of the grant of rights is yet another wrinkle.

Therefore, going with a temporary schedule for 2025 is the SEC’s way of continuing to maintain flexibility. And it did not want its annual spring meetings in Destin, Fla., in late May, to again be dominated by the schedule discussion. So it’s getting the decision out of the way to move on to weighing the greater matters on its plate.

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(Photo: Jeffrey Vest / Getty Images)