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SEC to play nine-game league football schedule beginning in 2026

By Kevin Kelley - August 21, 2025
SEC Nine-Game Football Schedule

Photo: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

The SEC has officially announced that its league members will play a nine-game conference football schedule beginning in 2026.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey made the announcement on Thursday. Earlier in the day, Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports reported that there was new traction towards moving to a nine-game schedule.

“Adding a ninth SEC game underscores our universities’ commitment to delivering the most competitive football schedule in the nation,” said SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. “This format protects rivalries, increases competitive balance, and paired with our requirement to play an additional Power opponent, ensures SEC teams are well prepared to compete and succeed in the College Football Playoff.”

Below are details of the new format from the SEC:

The SEC will continue with a single-standings, non-divisional structure;

Each school will play three annual opponents focused on maintaining many traditional rivalries;

Each team’s remaining six games will rotate among the remaining conference schools; and

Each team will face every other SEC program at least once every two years and every opponent home and away in four years.

Long discussed but never implemented, the SEC will add the extra game in the third season after expanding to a 16-team conference with the addition of the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns.

Beginning in 2026, SEC teams will play a nine-game conference schedule with three non-conference opponents. One of those three non-conference opponents is still required to be from one of the other power conferences — ACC, Big Ten, and Big 12 — or be a major independent (i.e. Notre Dame).

Per the release, the SEC will “…continue to evaluate its policies to ensure the continued scheduling of high-quality non-conference opponents.

“The SEC has established itself as the leader in delivering the most compelling football schedule in college athletics,” Sankey said. “Fans will see traditional rivalries preserved, new matchups more frequently, and a level of competition unmatched across the nation.”

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Comments (72)

Ah, that’s not good for me. As a Gator alumnus who’s lived in Arizona for 30 years, I was looking forward to the home-and-home with ASU, if I could stay alive that long, heh. With this change, after already losing the home and home with Cal, I would imagine at least one of the series with ASU, Colorado, and Notre Dame will have to go, and the one that makes the most sense is ASU.

I feel like they made the right choice here. Now let’s see if they pick the right annual rivalries!

As a Texas fan, the options feel pretty obvious. Oklahoma, A&M, and the historic SWC rivalry with Arkansas make wayyy too much sense.

I realize it won’t be as obvious for some of the more traditional SEC Schools, many of which have 1 or 2 obvious choices and then like 4 schools that could fill that third spot.

Oklahoma will be interesting too as another newcomer but without as much history with a third school. They should play Texas, obviously. They have a long (if one-sided) history with Missouri so that makes sense. But after that, what? Proximity to Arkansas? Big 12 history with A&M? Someone they’ve played rarely but had a big game or 2 with like Florida or LSU?

It’s just how my brain works. I want to see the list!

… also makes it far less likely that we get another really weird home slate like Texas did this year. Playing the OU game in Dallas is great, but it means that with 8 conference games it’s possible you have a tough schedule and still only play 1 (on paper) exciting game at home… and in this case, not until the last game of the year. Really weird for home season tickets. 4 SEC home games every year instead of 3 every other year just workd better.

The next few days this place will be filled with cancellations of non conference series, and good ones. A lot of teams will not play in the regular season again thanks to this, Florida-Miami, Clemson-Georgia to name a few.

It’s possible some of those OOC matchups may still hang on the balance of the auto bid proposal outcome rather than being outright cancelled.

Yeah, as a fan of this, I’ll admit that’s my one concern. I’d love a world where all the teams would book their 1 big OOC game and then some teams would book a second. Even one marquee and one “quality win” that isn’t necessarily a marquee opponent. But know Texas tried this a few years ago and eventually decided to lean into the big marquee game against the best teams they could schedule (Alabama, LSU, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan) but backed away from that second game (Cal, Maryland, etc) because on bad years that can really hurt.

As a Texas fan this was a given, wanting my 3 annual rivalries and a balanced home/away conference slate around our neutral site game against Oklahoma… plus I don’t like 3 “lite” OOC game. But I can definitely understand concerns for the schools with their annual OOC rivalries who still want to play some other big name OOC teams. Maybe over time more teams will consider a second power OOC game to help take away the penalty of doing so? I imagine Vanderbilt and Mississippi State and such may not want to, but if most of the schools like Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Oregon, USC, Texas, Oklahoma, LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, etc, *all* did it the risk of it making any of those teams look bad would shift a bit…?

Good. Best part is mandating the one power conference opponent. The B1G needs to bring that back. Penn State’s OOC schedules are so bad this year and next year that I don’t get to watch any meaningful football until October.

But not the 9 game schedule, that gets them to 10 power conference opponents. I’m stuck with nevada, temple, villanova, florida international.

Penn State should be playing 10 power conference opponents every year

Richard, Oregon v. Penn State is a CONFERENCE game. He’s referring to the crappy OOC games.

David, he said he wouldn’t get to watch any meaningful football until October.

Does he plan to not watch UO @ PSU?

I would not mind Georgia to play two P4 teams in OOC play like Georgia Tech & Ohio State.

Overall conference games are more meaningful.

The SEC will still have it’s G6 and FCS opponents on schedule. More likely this is impacting the 2nd P4/G6 games scheduled so not necessarily are we going to see less cupcakes.

We’ll see. I’m betting LSU has about 6 or so teams who think they have a shot at being their annual rivals. Arkansas, A&M, Florida, both Mississippi schools, Bama, and maybe Oklahoma?

Meanwhile, I know you guys hate this, but Missouri can’t just play OU 3 times. OU should be on their list due to history in the Big 8, but beyond that you need to come up with 2 more if you want to shake them. Vandy maybe? But who else?

“More boring games”…?

I mean, look, I love hearing about big time non-conference games, but… only a few of these teams were going to schedule more than 1 already, right? A few had 2 exciting ones.

I realize I’m looking at this from the perspective of a fan of an SEC newcomer (Texas), but this likely sets us up for 2026 with a schedule something like…

Texas State
Ohio State
UTSA
@Auburn
Missouri
vs Oklahoma
@ Mississippi
Missouri
LSU
@ Arkansas
South Carolina
Texas A&M

Without this, replace a conference game with New Mexico State or Rice. I was thinking MAYBE if they were feeling bold you’d get Cincy or Houston but those don’t seem super likely in the currently playoff landscape? But who knows.

I don’t know. You never know how good or bad teams will be in a given year, but that looks like an exciting schedule to me? Unless your only definition of exciting is teams that don’t usually play each other, (in other words, you basically find Texas/OU, Michigan/Ohio State, Georgia/Florda, etc, boring). If that’s your view, cool, but I don’t think the majority of football fans will agree with you? All that said, even from that perspective, realignment is granting a gift for your particular tastes, since Texas hasn’t usually played Georgia or Florida or Alabama or Auburn or LSU. Oregon hasn’t usually played Penn State or Ohio State or Wisconsin or Rutgers. And the playoff games mix and match even more.

I’d be curious to know how you think most of the current schedules are more boring since most of them just have an extra cupcake.

Football September is built for OOC games & October & November is built for conference games.

If you do not like it, please do not watch college football at all.

ACC really should join Big Ten, Big 12 & yes SEC to have a nine-game conference schedule.

The SEC acknowledging that the old system was benefiting them by rewarding weak wins against terrible competition. Will the rest of these loser SEC fans admit it, too?

Hoping that the Hogs get LSU, Texas and Ole Miss or Texas A&M, but knowing the SEC one of this will likely be Missouri. Oh well.

Richard, I’m not certain that Arkansas-Missouri will be an annual game. I think Arkansas will get Texas and A&M, and either Oklahoma, LSU, or Missouri as their 3rd.

Missouri will likely get Oklahoma and Kentucky and/or Vanderbilt.

Evan,

I don’t know what you folks are on.

It’s pretty obvious that the SEC is trying to set up Arkansas-Mizzou as an annual game. Look at who they have played on Black Friday!

And while it seems like Hogs fans just love to have A&M as an annual opponent, Vandy as an annual opponent for Mizzou makes zero sense when AR borders MO.

Long overdue. SEC schools will still play FCS schools and that’s a guarantee when they play five conference road games.

Why does the ACC keep getting a pass. Their commissioner was quoted as saying he likes their 8 game conference schedule.

Time to turn the heat up on the ACC. They need 9

Extremely difficult to do when several of those schools have a traditional annual OOC rivalry game and they also rotate in ND yet the big programs want 7 home games a year. Unless they count games vs ND as a “9th ACC” game.

Getting a pass? Why can’t the ACC schedule the way it wants to schedule? Why must it follow what the SEC does? It’s not like nine is some sort of magic number.

Easy as 1-2-3 Florida, Auburn & South Carolina are going to be Georgia annual opponents.

I hate this if it was going to happen should have gone to 10 so you could have even schedules and some of the better sec teams will get screwed by being placed with three of the most difficult SEC teams as permanent foes. The Big ten only has four top level teams so they are divided up without having all the good teams playing one opponent. The SEC has at least eight top tier teams.

They can keep plauing them–what stops Alabama from playing 9 SEC, one vs Big Ten, one versus Delaware and one vs The Citadel?

This sounds good on the surface but at what cost…..is the trade off 4 auto bids for the SEC and a 24 team playoff with 7-5 teams getting in? Nobody needs to see that……Cincy made a 4 team playoff spare me with the “access” whining.

Unless something has changed and I missed it, the SEC has been favoring keeping the auto bids for just the top 5 ranked conference champions and 11 at larges for an expanded 16 team playoff. But if it gets as big as 24 who knows what’ll happen

I like the 9 conference game schedule. No doubt the one additional OOC P4 game will be at home when playing 4 home conference games and away when playing 5 home conference games. Thus every year will be a 5-5 home/away P4 schedule. Of course, there may continue to be many “neutral” site OOC P4 games whereby the SEC will not play any true OOC P4 games. Here’s my issue, the other two games will no doubt always be home games against a P6 foe and an FCS foe. Thus, SEC teams will have 7 home games and 5 away games (or 4 way games and 1 neutral site game) every year….making just about every SEC team bowl eligible every year. If the SEC wants my respect they should play 6 homes games and 6 away games every year. Either that or at least stop with the FCS foes. Just too weak.

My predictions for the 3 annual opponents:

Option 1:
Oklahoma: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri
Texas: Oklahoma, A&M, Arkansas
Texas A&M: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri
Arkansas: Oklahoma, Texas, A&M
LSU: Ole Miss, Miss St, Florida
Missouri: A&M, Oklahoma, Kentucky
Ole Miss: LSU, Miss St, Vanderbilt
Miss St: Ole Miss, LSU, Alabama
Alabama: Miss St, Auburn, Tennessee
Vanderbilt: S Carolina, Tennessee, Ole Miss
Auburn: Alabama, Florida, Georgia
Tennessee: Vanderbilt, Alabama, Kentucky
Kentucky: Missouri, Tennessee, S Carolina
Florida: LSU, Auburn, Georgia
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, S Carolina
S Carolina: Georgia, Kentucky, Vanderbilt

Option 2:
Oklahoma: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri
Texas: Oklahoma, A&M, Arkansas
Texas A&M: Texas, Arkansas, LSU
Arkansas: Oklahoma, Texas, A&M
LSU: Ole Miss, Miss St, A&M
Missouri: Vanderbilt, Oklahoma, Kentucky
Ole Miss: LSU, Miss St, Vanderbilt
Miss St: Ole Miss, LSU, Alabama
Alabama: Miss St, Auburn, Tennessee
Vanderbilt: Missouri, Tennessee, Ole Miss
Auburn: Alabama, Florida, Georgia
Tennessee: Vanderbilt, Alabama, Kentucky
Kentucky: Missouri, Tennessee, S Carolina
Florida: S Carolina, Auburn, Georgia
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, S Carolina
S Carolina: Georgia, Kentucky, Florida

Should SEC go all conference games on Thanksgiving weekend here is my proposal & this is just a suggestion.

Georgia-South Carolina

Missouri-Kentucky

Texas A&M-Texas

Florida-LSU

Auburn-Alabama

Tennessee-Vanderbilt

Mississippi State-Ole Miss

Arkansas-Oklahoma

I don’t think the FL, GA, SC, and KY interconference intrastate rivalry games will move.

So Thanksgiving weekend will have the Iron Bowl, the Egg Bowl, Texas-A&M, Tennessee-Vandy, and then LSU-Arkansas + OU-Mizzou.

Richard It’s all excellent I want what will be best for SEC on Thanksgiving weekend no matter what the outcome will look like.

I think we’ll see this:
Texas-A&M
Ole Miss-Miss St
Bama-Auburn
Vandy-Tennessee

Then, depending on who the permanent opponents are, and who’s playing who that certain year:
LSU-Oklahoma
Missouri-Arkansas (Battle Line)
Or
LSU-Arkansas (Battle of the Boot)
Missouri-Oklahoma (Big 8/Big 12 rivalry)
Or
LSU-Missouri (Battle of the Tigers)
Oklahoma-Arkansas (Battle of the Ozarks?)

Louisville-Kentucky
Clemson-S Carolina
Florida State-Florida
Georgia Tech-Georgia

Will all stay

I am very good with Georgia to play Georgia Tech on Thanksgiving weekend plus I really want Georgia to start with a conference opponent for first regular season game second or third would be options too for conference opponent.

9 conference games is too many for the P4.

Here’s what should be done:

ACC: Remain at 8, add UNC-WFU and Miami’s games against the Northeast schools to the protected games list

Big 12: Drop to 7, organize its 16 schools into regional pods, two pairings of pods play each other each year on a 6-year schedule.

Big Ten: Drop to 8, 5 protected opponents for each school and 3 rotating on an 8-year schedule, the second half of each rotation reverses the location rotation of the protected games from the first half.

SEC: Drop to 7, 3 protected opponents and 4 rotating on a 6-year schedule.

This would allow some select rivalries that have been paused due to realignment over the years such as Bedlam to return as OOC games on an annual basis, and more importantly more top notch OOC games between P4 schools. The Big 12 and SEC would require at least 3 OOC games against P4 competition, and the ACC and Big Ten at least 2.

In the one of the more egregious cases, Kentucky hasn’t played a P4 opponent in the regular season other than Louisville or Indiana since 1990 when they played North Carolina of the ACC. Their last Big 12 opponent was Kansas State in 1983 (when the Big 12 was still the Big 8), their only ever game against the Pac-12 (no longer a power conference) was Oregon State in 1976 (when the Pac-12 was still the Pac-8), their last game against an SWC (now defunct) team was Baylor in 1978, and their last non-Indiana opponent from the Big Ten was Ohio State all the way back in 1935.

Games against fellow basketball schools like Duke, Kansas, Michigan State, and North Carolina would be especially lucrative for Kentucky.

Let’s not forget annual Alabama vs Vanderbilt match ups, we own Alabama from now on.
Can’t wait to upset them for years to come

Odds are 14 million to one that select rivalries like Oklahoma State-Oklahoma, Missouri-Kansas, Penn State-Pittsburgh & Maryland-Virginia will ever play each other in Football again & I do not see it happen at all.

The SEC can finally claim to be a legitimate conference.

It always takes awhile, but Sankey eventually does what I tell him.

These are what I think should be the protected SEC games, which as I have mentioned can be done with a seven-game conference schedule. A 6-year rotation isn’t all that long, a player at an SEC school who plays a full four-year career would play everyone at least once.

Alabama: Auburn, Mississippi State, Tennessee
Arkansas: LSU, Texas, Texas A&M
Auburn: Alabama, Florida, Georgia
Florida: Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, South Carolina
Kentucky: Missouri, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
LSU: Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas A&M
Mississippi: LSU, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt
Mississippi State: Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma
Missouri: Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina
Oklahoma: Mississippi State, Missouri, Texas
South Carolina: Florida, Georgia, Missouri
Tennessee: Alabama, Kentucky, Vanderbilt
Texas: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M
Texas A&M: Arkansas, LSU, Texas
Vanderbilt: Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee

SEC games on the annual Thanksgiving week schedule would be:

Alabama-Auburn
Arkansas-LSU (returning to Thanksgiving weekend for the first time since 2013)
Mississippi-Mississippi State
Missouri-Oklahoma (being played on Thanksgiving weekend on an annual basis for the first time ever)
Tennessee-Vanderbilt
Texas-Texas A&M

Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina will continue to play their in-state ACC opponents (Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, and Clemson, respectively).

SEC Seven-game conference schedule will NOT help CFB period.

Furthermore Z-Man You need to be very mindful of SEC that they could go all conference games on Thanksgiving weekend just like Big Ten & Big 12.

Also, Furthermore OOC games belong in September & conference games belong in October & November.

If you do not like it, please do not watch college football at all.

@Dan NW-IL-MI, Clemson-South Carolina, Georgia-GT, Florida-FSU, and Kentucky-Louisville belong on Thanksgiving weekend

Joseph Rodriguez I am very blessed & happy that my dream came true That SEC is going to a nine-game conference schedule also expect changes that will occur with new format & I do remain optimistic that four SEC-ACC match up will continue to play on Thanksgiving weekend however that is all subject to change.

Here are my top four SEC conference games that I really would want to be play annually.

1. Georgia-South Carolina

2. Missouri-Kentucky

3. Florida-LSU

4. Arkansas-Oklahoma

@Dan NW-IL-MI, I doubt Arkansas-Oklahoma will be protected, they never spent any time together in the same conference prior to 2024. remember, Arkansas was in the SWC, and Oklahoma was in the Big 8

Best disagreement of all time Between Joseph Rodriguez & Me.

Joseph says no that Arkansas-Oklahoma will be unprotected & I say that Arkansas-Oklahoma is going to be opposite & it will be protected.

I Have zero concerns over it.

I am very happy to hear the news that the SEC finally went to 9 conference games. When you have 16 teams, it’s the right decision to make sure that rivalries are maintained annually and you actually rotate through everybody in your conference more regularly. If the SEC never wanted to increase the games from 8, then they never should have had expanded in the first place.

SEC: Love the 3+6 model and 1 P4 opponent every year. 10 P4 games. This conference has a lot of true rivalries and history so it’s nice to see that every team will keep 3 opponents annually. Even if some teams don’t have 3 true rivals, they can be matched up with other teams. The 3 annual rivalries thing can be reviewed every 4-6 years as well if a good change can be accommodated. But even with that being said, if a team doesn’t get a team that they would like annually, you will still be playing them every other year. Much better than the previous format where you didn’t see teams for 6-12 years (or never when it comes to UGA visiting TA&M).

Big 10: This is the conference of my favorite team and the one that I watch the most. But I won’t shy away from saying that I would like to see them step up and make the 1 P4 game MANDATORY. 10 P4 games for everyone as well.

Big 12: The one thing that I would change for this conference is the scheduling format. I think there should be a few more rivalry games that are maintained annually. I believe that the TTU/Baylor and ISU/KSU games will not be played coming up in the next few years for the first time in like 50+ years! I understand that the Big 12 is kind of a patched together conference but I think they could find 2 rivals for every team to keep annually. Even if it’s not a “true” rivalry, they could maintain it for geographic reasons. For example, WVU could have CIN/UCF. KSU could have KU/ISU. ISU could have KSU/OKST, BAY could have TTU/TCU. These are just guesses. I think it could help with travel a lot. Also, Big 12 needs to mandate 1 P4 game as well for 10 P4 games. I don’t think that they’ve made this mandatory, but if I am wrong please correct me.

ACC: I understand that they have 8 conference games. 9 conference games with an odd number of teams (17) is very difficult to figure out. I think they should stay at 8 conference games since they have an odd number of teams, BUT make it mandatory for 2 P4 games every year for a total of 10 P4 games. Once they add an 18th team, then they can discuss going to 9 conference games. That is unless they can figure out a way to do 9 games now (ex. one game is between two conference foes but doesn’t count in the standings, etc.)

That makes 34 OOC P4 games for the ACC, 18 for the B10, 16 for the B12, and 16 for the SEC. If ND plays 10 P4 games, that’s 94. 94 divided by 2 is 47 OOC games between P4 opponents. I think this can be figured out. If a few teams would like to play 11, that would be great too. Personally, I wish everybody only played Power teams and that we had one FCS warmup game as an exhibition in the preseason (but I know that this will never happen!). 10 P4 games for all and 2 games to schedule between G6 and FCS is reasonable. Nobody needs 3-4 cupcake games anymore. That’s not good for anybody, especially the fans.

In several comments above I detailed how each P4 conference should approach conference games scheduling.

The Big 12’s rivalry pods should be these:

Central: Colorado, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State
East: Cincinnati, Iowa State, UCF, West Virginia
Texas: Baylor, Houston, TCU, Texas Tech
West: Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, Utah

The Big Ten’s protected opponents should be these:

Illinois: Indiana, Northwestern, Ohio State, Purdue, Wisconsin
Indiana: Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, Purdue
Iowa: Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin
Maryland: Northwestern, Penn State, Purdue, Rutgers, USC
Michigan: Indiana, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, Wisconsin
Michigan State: Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue
Minnesota: Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Penn State, Wisconsin
Nebraska: Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin
Northwestern: Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, UCLA, USC
Ohio State: Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Rutgers
Oregon: Iowa, Nebraska, UCLA, USC, Washington
Penn State: Maryland, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, Rutgers
Purdue: Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, Rutgers
Rutgers: Maryland, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, UCLA
UCLA: Northwestern, Oregon, Rutgers, USC, Washington
USC: Maryland, Northwestern, Oregon, UCLA, Washington
Washington: Iowa, Nebraska, Oregon, UCLA, USC
Wisconsin: Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska

You are going to need a crying towel Z-Man & Chances of shortening Conferences & increase rivalry games is zero.

Furthermore, it’s time to definitely give up on all of this.

Sorry, Z-man, conferences aren’t going backwards with quantity of conference games. You don’t need to comment about it in every single thread. Thanks!