The Southeastern Conference’s spring meetings will wrap up Friday in Destin, Florida.
Will it include a verdict on whether the SEC will remain with eight league football games or finally move to nine when Oklahoma and Texas join the league in 2025?
“Come back tomorrow,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told reporters Thursday night. “We’ll see.”
Sankey’s verbal tease seemed to contrast his Wednesday comments on scheduling, when he said, “We have more work to do.”
The league’s football contingent had left Destin by Thursday night, and that included Tennessee second-year coach Josh Heupel, who was attending his first spring meetings given that last year’s discussions had to be conducted virtually. When the topic of scheduling came up, Heupel sounded as unsure as every other counterpart about the eventual outcome.
An eight-game schedule likely would contain a format with only one permanent opponent and seven rotating foes, while a nine-game slate would be expected to include three permanent opponents and six that would rotate.
“I don’t have a sense of where anybody is on that, truly, as a collective group,” Heupel told reporters. “I think that’s going to be handled by administration and presidents. When that vote is, I’m not sure.”
Playing eight league games with one permanent opponent would assuredly eliminate Tennessee facing Alabama on an annual basis, as the SEC would pair Alabama with Auburn and Tennessee with Vanderbilt. The Crimson Tide and Volunteers first met in 1901 and have played annually since 1928, which predates the SEC’s birth in 1933.
Alabama has won all 15 meetings with Nick Saban guiding the Tide to grab a commanding 59-38-7 series lead. Tennessee had won 10 of the previous 12 encounters before Saban’s arrival in Tuscaloosa.
“We’ve got a bunch of really good historic games that our fans have been really passionate about, and want to play in those big games,” Heupel said. “Obviously there are some that have been historic for a long time, both inside of our own state and with Alabama. At the end of the day, these are factors that I don’t control, and I’m going to lean on our administration for what’s right for Tennessee and ultimately the conference, too.
“This is the best conference in America, and there are a lot of teams that we consider rivals. As I’ve gotten a chance to understand the history of Tennessee football and just how the calendar and schedule used to unfold, you can tell that there are a lot of games that are really important to our fan base.”
‘VOLS’ to return
Tennessee athletic director Danny White on Thursday posted an artist’s rendering on Twitter of Neyland Stadium with the old “VOLS” letters on either side of the video board above the south end zone. The orange squares with white letters were recognized symbols for decades in Knoxville but went away in the summer of 1999, when Neyland’s first video board was erected.
Late commitment
The Vols received a late commitment for their 2022 signing class Thursday from Savion Herring, 6-foot-4, 325-pound offensive lineman from Monroe College in New Rochelle, New York.
According to 247Sports.com, Herring visited Kansas, Syracuse, South Florida and Middle Tennessee State before picking the Vols over Kansas.
Williams in Finals
The NBA Finals tipped off Thursday night between the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors, and Tennessee was represented with Celtics third-year forward Grant Williams.
Williams entered the best-of-seven championship series having averaged 30.7 minutes, 10.1 points and 4.3 rebounds per game this postseason, and he has averaged 40.5% shooting from 3-point range. He is attempting to become the first former Vol to win an NBA title since Cleveland’s Jordan McRae in 2016.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.