Greg Sankey provides timeline for SEC schedule potentially moving to nine games

When the SEC brass leaves Miramar Beach later this week following the conclusion of the 2025 SEC spring meeting, conference commissioner Greg Sankey believes a decision will not be made regarding a nine-game conference football schedule. He discussed the news with Paul Finebaum on Wednesday afternoon.

“That’s my expectation,” Sankey told Finebaum. Many saw this as one of the major talking points of the week. However, it’s one that hasn’t been able to be agreed upon yet and likely won’t be resolved in the immediate future.

One of the issues holding the final decision back are the ongoing discussions regarding changes to the College Football Playoff. Multiple proposed formats have revealed polarizing opinions between conferences.

“It’s not all about the CFP,” Sankey said. “Recall our past conversations. There’s a segment of our membership highly focused on going to nine games. Is that an asset or a liability? The CFP selection leans more towards liability. There’s a segment who says, ‘You know what, we’ll play the games.’ We’re going to be successful and we’ll be fine. … You’re taking a game per week of non conference games where there could be 16, boiling that down to eight if you go to nine.

“We need some clarity around CFP direction, though. I think that becomes the most prominent issue on the list of evaluation points.”

Some of the models that have been proposed, which may support a nine-game SEC schedule include the 4-4-2-2-1 and 5-11 models. The first refers to the amount of automatic qualifiers a conference would receive: SEC (4), Big Ten (4), ACC (2), Big 12 (2), G6 (1). Meanwhile, the 5-11 model refers to having the five highest-ranked conference champions, as well as 11 at-large bids.

The issue surrounding the first model is that the Big Ten and SEC would have double the amount of automatic qualifiers as the ACC and Big 12. Officials and leaders from both conferences have been outspoken on the issue, and no decision on the future of the CFP has been decided in that regard.

What has been decided, however, is a new seeding format which Sankey said the SEC was “fully supportive” of on Wednesday. The CFP will utilize a straight-seeding model, which allows the top four-ranked teams in the final playoff rankings to earn a first-round bye. The five highest-rated conference champions will earn a spot in the CFP, but the bye is no longer guaranteed.