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The Tuscaloosa News
Prefer eight SEC football games? You're on the wrong side of the money | Goodbread
- Story byThe Tuscaloosa News
- Prefer eight SEC football games? You're on the wrong side of the money | Goodbread
August got hot again in Alabama yesterday, and in a move that was every bit that certain, the SEC took the bag.
The 2026 season will mark the advent of nine conferences games per team in the SEC after the league had held fast at eight for the past 33 years. By the time it expanded to 14 teams, adding Texas A&M and Missouri in 2012, the move to a nine-game schedule had already become a topic. But under then-commissioner Mike Slive, the notion was met with a "no thanks." Fast-forward to 2024, and neither new expansion to 16 schools nor ridicule from Big Ten Country for its eight-game schedule compelled the SEC to change. It was a more strident drumbeat than it had been 12 years earlier, but was quieted just the same.
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Greg Sankey added Texas and Oklahoma , and to the nine-game schedule, schools said, "Eh, we're good."
WHAT'S IT MEAN? SEC football moves to nine-game conference schedule. What it means for Alabama football
WHAT'S NEXT? In new SEC 9-game schedule, what could Alabama football protected rivalries be?
But then, the power of the bag entered the chat.
Two factors, both rooted in revenue, drove this decision. First, a ninth conference game gives the SEC additional inventory to sell to deep-pocketed television networks. The House vs. NCAA settlement just put a $20 million dent in athletic budgets all over college football, one that will escalate by the year, and there isn't a better way for SEC schools to offset it in the future than by strengthening their bargaining position in broadcast rights negotiations. The second factor dovetails perfectly with the first: a ninth SEC game will allow the league to give each school three permanent opponents, which protects rivalries.
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Among the traditional games that could now be protected are Florida-Kentucky and Texas-Arkansas, but the big one for the SEC is Alabama - LSU .
The money logic tells Crimson Tide fans to expect Auburn , Tennessee and LSU as permanent opponents. Had the SEC stuck with an eight-game schedule, the Alabama -LSU game would have been in serious jeopardy as an annual affair. But the TV ratings generated by the Alabama-LSU series is too golden a goose for the SEC not to make permanent in the nine-game format. That will make the Crimson Tide's schedule consistently tougher than most. The College Football Playoff recently announced that its selection committee will place a greater emphasis on strength of schedule, and you can bet Alabama fans will closely scrutinize how seriously the committee takes that new mandate .
Alabama Director of Athletics Greg Byrne, as he's signaled multiple times, will likely trim back some of the tough non-conference games that the Crimson Tide had placed on future schedules.
Meanwhile, the SEC's position on a new CFP format — the league favors 11 at-large berths in a 16-team field — will only harden from here. Going to nine games will plant the league's staunch heels so deep in the turf on this topic, there'll be no moving it. After the Big Ten failed spectacularly to build consensus for its suggestion to guarantee a fixed number of automatic bids for each power conference, it floated an idea even sillier: a 24- or even a 28-team playoff.
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That will appeal to Greg Sankey about like poison ivy.
The SEC prefers something green that doesn't itch. And comes in a bag.
Tuscaloosa News sport columnist Chase Goodbread.
Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Prefer eight SEC football games? You're on wrong side of the money
