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SEC ‘moving closer’ to nine-game football schedule, per report

By Kevin Kelley - August 21, 2025
SEC Football

Photo: Jason Getz-Imagn Images

The SEC could soon adopt a nine-game conference football schedule, according to a report from Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports Thursday.

While the SEC and its members have held discussions on the eight-game vs. nine-game schedule debate for several years, Dellenger reported that meetings with SEC executives have advanced the issue this week. Additionally, SEC presidents are expected to “meet soon” to discuss the proposal.

If the nine-game schedule is approved, Dellenger reported, it would result in each league member playing three permanent opponents and six rotating opponents each season. Additionally, if the SEC adopts a nine-game schedule, the ACC would likely follow suit, joining the Big 12 and Big Ten with nine-game league schedules.

The latest SEC nine-game schedule news comes just one day after the College Football Playoff announced a revised strength of schedule metric. From the CFP release:

Changes for the upcoming season include enhancements to the tools that the selection committee uses to assess schedule strength and how teams perform against their schedule. The current schedule strength metric has been adjusted to apply greater weight to games against strong opponents. An additional metric, record strength, has been added to the selection committee’s analysis to go beyond a team’s schedule strength to assess how a team performed against that schedule. This metric rewards teams defeating high-quality opponents while minimizing the penalty for losing to such a team. Conversely, these changes will provide minimal reward for defeating a lower-quality opponent while imposing a greater penalty for losing to such a team.

Should the SEC move to a nine-game conference schedule for the 2026 season, only four schools would need to cancel or reschedule a non-conference game. Schools with four non-conference opponents on the books include Arkansas, Georgia (Tennessee State was recently reported to be the fourth), Kentucky, and Mississippi State.

In the ACC, however, 13 of 17 members would need to adjust their non-conference slates for next season  by removing a game. Teams in the clear currently include Boston College, Pitt, and Wake Forest with only three games each, and Stanford with just two.

View Comments (21)

Comments (21)

Or, the ACC starts counting games with Notre Dame as conference games that would make it easier. Or have ND join. If ND had FSU, Miami, and BC as 3 regular opponents and rotated the other 6, that would work.

ND joining would be the most ideal if they want to actually go to 9. They currently cannot go to 9 without adding another team or having one team play 8. The math just doesn’t work.

When will the SEC 26 schedule come out ? Last I heard, it’s gonna be late summer or early fall.

Andrew H:

ND definitely isn’t joining the ACC but the ACC certainly could count the ND game as a 9th “ACC” game for those ACC schools who play the Domers and also require all the other ACC schools to play 1 other ACC school OOS.

That would be the cleanest solution (and also would allow more games that ACC schools want to play more of, like the NC schools all playing each other) to be played more regularly.

The only way I would be in favor of the ACC having 9 conference games is if Cal and Stanford are guaranteed 5 home games every year.

I’m sure they will still be on the schedule. 9 conference games didn’t stop Big Ten teams from playing FCS schools

Once again, 9 is too many for the P4 conferences.

The Big 12 and SEC should drop to 7, with each conference adopting a version of the 3-4-4-4 format, the ACC should stay at 8 and add UNC-WF and Miami’s games against the NE US schools to the protected matchups, and the Big Ten should drop to 8 with a 5-3-3-3-3 schedule format.

This would allow a selection of rivalries lost to various realignments to resume as annual OOC games, like Bedlam, but more importantly more top-notch OOC games between P4 schools, with the Big 12 and SEC requiring at least three such games each year, and the ACC and Big Ten two.

I agree with you, this isn’t what’s best imo, this will make for alot of boring rematches in the playoffs

No. No. No.
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Conferences should be the bulk of the games for any schedule. If you want more ooc games than eliminate conference championships and have everyone play a 13th regular season game.

Florida has work to do for 2028. Here’s what its non-SEC schedule looks like as I type this:

Sept. 2: Furman
Sept. 9: Colorado
Sept. 16: at Arizona State
Nov. 25: at Florida State

My guess is that Arizona State will be the odd program out.

I just hope it does not affect OOC Thanksgiving Matchups and not a fan of going to 9 conference games, we already beat each other up enough

I am not a fan of this, I hope it does not affect OOC Thanksgiving matchups, and we beat each other up every week in the SEC already. Watch for alot of OOC changes coming very soon for 2026 and beyond

September would be a very good option for

Georgia-Georgia Tech

Florida-Florida State

Kentucky-Louisville

South Carolina-Clemson

I believe it’s great that the SEC is going to 9 conference games, but what I would like to see happen is with the conferences getting bigger and bigger, I would hope that they go to 10 conference games, still you wouldn’t play everyone, but the more games, the better the chance of knowing who is the top 2 teams for the championship games,instead of a bunch of tiebreakers.

With 28 playoff teams, it just won’t matter all that much who the conference champ will be.

Better late than never. The SEC has always been light on conference scheduling. This takes away one cupcake from their schedules. Also, everyone will play everyone else once every other year, rather than waiting upwards of 6 years. The Pac-10/12, Big 12, and now Big Ten have been doing this for years. Time to get with the program!