The Southeastern Conference’s scheduling model for football is so entrenched that most fans could piece it together with ease: Eight SEC games, a Football Championship Subdivision opponent at home and a couple of other nonconference matchups – perhaps with a traditional rival mixed in.
How long that tried and true formula can last is the question. The SEC will add Oklahoma and Texas to its membership no later than July 2025, and there could be more expansion.
“I think the SEC needs to expand its conference games for sure,” said former Vanderbilt quarterback Jordan Rodgers, now an analyst for the SEC Network.
The SEC season is already a pressure cooker of eight conference games in which a team’s championship fortunes can be upended in any given week. Now the league might add to the gauntlet.
Tim Tebow, the former Florida quarterback who won the 2007 Heisman Trophy and two BCS national championships with the Gators, isn’t sure how that shakes out. Now an ESPN analyst, he sees the importance of facing usually overmatched teams from the FCS in order for SEC teams to find a rhythm. But from a fan’s perspective, he wants more matchups like the Top 25 showdown this month in which Auburn traveled to Penn State for a rare SEC at Big Ten game during the regular season.