SEC debate with 2026 football schedule expansion: Keep rivalries, or go for cupcake games?
Picture the scene in 'Shawshank Redemption' when Morgan Freeman's character goes in front of the parole board, expecting to be rejected once again. He comments on the mockery of the proceeding and says bluntly, 'You go on and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time, because, to tell you the truth, I don't give a (expletive).'
Yeah, that just about sums up my feelings on this upcoming SEC football scheduling debate.
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Stay at eight conference games, or go to nine, I don't much care anymore. Just put the schedule format to a vote in what will be a high-profile discussion item this week at the SEC spring meetings and make a decision.
As it stands, the SEC has approved no schedule format beyond the upcoming 2025 season.
Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton (14) runs with the ball against Texas during the second half in the 2024 SEC championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The SEC carried on this scheduling charade for years since the announcement of Texas and Oklahoma joining the league. Some conference members previously pretended like they wanted an additional conference game, only to turtle up come voting time and preserve the eight-game conference schedule that's supplemented with a feast of non-conference cupcake games.
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Before this came up for vote the last time in 2023, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey implied that money wouldn't be a driver in the scheduling decision. Only an idiot would believe that, though. Money talks, and some conference members were reluctant two years ago to add another conference game unless ESPN, the league's media partner, put more cash on the table. ESPN didn't sweeten the pot.
Sankey proclaimed before the schedule vote in 2023 that the conference at the vanguard of college athletics 'does not stand still.' Days later, the SEC's membership unanimously voted to stand still with an eight-game conference schedule for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Eighteen months later, the Big Ten, which plays nine conference games, led all conferences with four playoff qualifiers. The jokes write themselves.
Rivalries hang in balance of SEC football schedule debate
The SEC cared so much about secondary rivalries like Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee in its divisional era that it built a schedule format around maintaining those games. This next vote on the schedule will test how much resolve still exists for protecting centuries-long rivalry games.
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A nine-game conference schedule would allow for secondary rivalries like those two and others like Texas-Texas A&M to continue annually. Forging ahead with an eight-game format would put those secondary rivalries under threat of interruption unless the league abandons its stated goal of having all schools play each other twice during a four-year period.
Rivalry scenes like the 'Prayer at Jordan-Hare' and cigar-puffing Tennessee fans tearing down the goal posts and baptizing them in the river after a long-awaited win on 'The Third Saturday in October' help make the SEC brand what it is.
But, maybe SEC members will decide this week that it's more important to leave room on the schedule for Tennessee to play Furman and Kennesaw State – both will come to Neyland Stadium in 2026! – instead of Alabama, and for Auburn to tussle with Jacksonville State instead of Georgia.
And after the Mississippi beats Wofford 92-0 in 2026, coach Lane Kiffin can chant 'S-E-C! S-E-C!' and declare the strength of the SEC (half of which the Rebels didn't play) so strong that the Rebels deserve a playoff bid with their 9-3 record.
Few SEC teams opt for 10 power conference games in current format
Credit Alabama, Florida and South Carolina for cueing up two Power Four non-conference opponents in 2025 to accompany the eight conference games. If Florida smashes Miami and Florida State en route to a 9-3 record against a rigorous schedule, well, we might see a 9-3 playoff team for the first time.
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By comparison, the 13 other SEC teams will play only nine Power Four opponents. That's one fewer Power Four opponent than teams like Arizona and Central Florida will play.
If Missouri can manage to fend off Central Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana-Lafayette, Massachusetts, Vanderbilt and one more SEC team, the Tigers would wrap up bowl eligibility.
That's the beauty of the eight-game conference schedule: Bowl bids await for average teams that can beat bad teams in their out-of-league slate.
The beauty of the SEC adding a ninth conference game would be the creation of more matchups fans want to watch and media partners want to televise.
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One fewer cupcake game also would bolster the SEC's case when it comes time to stump for at-large bids for bubble teams.
Even better, ESPN might now be ready to fork over extra revenue in exchange for that ninth SEC game.
The SEC could even time its rollout of a ninth conference game with playoff expansion that's probably coming in 2026. A bigger playoff would reduce the risk of an additional conference game thwarting a team's opportunity for playoff access.
Alternatively, the SEC could stay at eight, turn up its nose at rivalries, rebuff the prospect of a bigger payday from ESPN, protect the cupcake games, and maintain the daintier conference schedule that offers minimal resistance to the league's weaker members securing a Liberty Bowl bid.
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At this point, there's not much left to debate. So, go on ahead, sonny, and call it to a vote.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com. Follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SEC football schedule expansion debate looms at spring meetings
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SEEWhy 'The Gilded Age' Season 3 won't be eligible for any Emmys this year Baranski thinks Julian Fellowes, who writes The Gilded Age, channels his own personality into Agnes. 'He loves those tough old broads — they are survivors, and they've got the wit and they're made of vinegar,' said Baranski. Added Spector, 'I think he thinks those are the women who are really holding civilization together, and I think he's probably right.' Asked how she nailed Agnes' withering stare, 'Oh god it's so awful to say, I didn't have to work at it,' said Baranski. 'My mother was a tough old broad. And I swear when I watch myself play Agnes, I just see my mom with her glass of Seagram 7 crown.' As for Bertha, 'She's pretty single-minded,' said Coon. 'We know she's determined to marry off Gladys. I'll say without spoiling anything, Bertha usually does get her way. But it doesn't mean there aren't consequences to that.' Coon defends Bertha's single-mindededness in marrying off her daughter. 'She understands the world is not set up for Gladys, and that if Gladys hopes to have any power or influence — the power and influence Bertha would wish to have — she has to be married in a very particular way, married well,' said Coon. 'Because I think what Bertha understands is that you can have puppy love and have a lovely time, but that will not sustain you for 35 years. So I have a lot of respect for what Bertha wants for Gladys, and I do believe it's loving. Does she go about it in a way that seems a little bit blunt? Perhaps. But I do believe she understands something about the world that she wants her daughter to be not just safe but fulfilled.' That's another theme of the third season — the collision between social and business forces that was happening at the time. 'How many women born at a different time would have been running places? And what do you do with that energy?' said Coon. 'Well, you put it into your kids because that's the only place you're allowed to put it.' Added Baranski, 'The men were busy earning money and making money and creating this capitalistic society, but it was the women who were spending the money and creating the culture of the Gilded Age. You could say it was completely over the top and indulgent in income inequality, except that they did create cultural institutions that last to this day. And the robber barons, whatever we think of them, they financed cultural institutions, which is not really true today with our tech barons and our current oligarchs. 'Shame on them for not supporting the arts.' Speaking of robber barons, 'George's story of the season is trying to build the transcontinental railroad,' said Spector. 'I think there's something actually fundamentally relatable about George, even though because of the scale on which he acts, there's a monstrousness to a lot of what he does.' Said Baranski, 'I have to say you are a man on a mission, and these robber barons, they got a lot done.' 'So did Mussolini,' quipped Spector. New cast members will join this season, including Merritt Wever as Bertha's sister, Bill Camp as J.P. Morgan, Andrea Martin as a medium, and Lisagay Hamilton as the suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. 'The thing that I most was gratified by was I had not seen Black middle- and upper-class communities represented in this period,' said Coon. 'The history of that is so fraught because of the way those neighborhoods were bulldozed to make Central Park. And the fact that we see these black actors in their joy, having a ball, getting paired off, with their own history, and yet existing still in a world where Bertha Russell isn't going to look at you, or acknowledge that you're there, to me that's one of the most thrilling parts of the show. To get to see that world sort of brought to life in this Gilded Age period is just something we haven't really seen before. I always thrill to those moments in the story.' Spector acknowledged that the show has been criticized for having 'a lot of drama, but no stakes,' said Spector. 'But there's a real subtle wit in cutting from being in the South, with Denée [Benton]'s character, to then being in our drawing rooms. The show has a kind of ironic wit about it because of that that I think it would lack otherwise.' And while Agnes can be such a 'bitch,' as Baranski acknowledged, she does think she has a point. 'Things will really go awry if you only think in terms of material existence,' she said. 'So I think her heart and her mind and her ethics are very much in the right place, as stubborn as she is. One of the reasons I'd love this show to continue is because I think there is such an exploration to be done in terms of the corruption that goes on, the buying of government influence, and the grotesque displays of wealth sending women into a spaceship.' Joked Spector, 'Christine, you're a firework.' 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