The Southeastern Conference is the last of the Power Five leagues to release its adjusted schedule for the 2020 college football season.
That wait may be a little bit longer, given the chaos this week that has engulfed the sport. After all, the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences recently released their shortened, league-only schedules only to cancel their seasons Tuesday.
"We're getting there, but I think we need a little more clarity around sort of the landscape of college athletics, and we hope to have that in the coming days," Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said Wednesday as a guest of the "Studio 12" podcast on the school's athletic website. "Hopefully we can put those dates out there. They will try to protect some of the traditional rivalries at the end of the season, but it may not be possible on how everything shakes out.
"I don't think it will be by the end of this week, so maybe next week we could have a full calendar of dates."
Another SEC athletic director, Alabama's Greg Byrne, told SiriusXM Radio on Thursday morning that the league is still on schedule to begin practice this Monday.
The Atlantic Coast Conference announced its updated schedule last Thursday, while the Big 12 revealed its latest slate Wednesday. The SEC last Friday announced the two extra cross-divisional contests to complete each team's 10-game schedule, with Tennessee adding Auburn and Texas A&M, Georgia adding Arkansas and Mississippi State, and Alabama adding Kentucky and Missouri.
Bjork was asked about Texas A&M having Florida and Tennessee, two Eastern Division teams that combined for 19 victories last season, added to its schedule, and he responded by saying, "the balance piece was a part of it." The Aggies already were playing South Carolina and Vanderbilt out of the East, with the Gamecocks and Commodores having combined for just seven wins in 2019.
Another scheduling goal, Bjork said, was to avoid back-to-back games against rotating cross-divisional foes, whether from last season to this year or from this season to next year.
Bjork said Aggies players continue to feel safer in Texas A&M's athletic facilities than anywhere else, and he is optimistic there will be fans this season at Kyle Field. He isn't giving up on the possibility of having nearly 50% capacity within the 102,733-seat facility but is well aware of how fluid things remain.
"We're not operating day to day," Bjork said. "We're 15 minutes at a time."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.