SEC spring meetings primer: Talking future schedule, Playoff, NIL and Jimbo vs. Nick 2.0
DESTIN — For the next several days, the SEC will takeover Destin, Fla., as the league’s leaders and coaches meet to discuss name, image and likeness, future scheduling, playoff expansion, transfer portal windows and more.
There’s undoubtably going to be grumblings about collectives and college football free agency, but after commissioner Greg Sankey told Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher to zip-it recently, the spiciest of soundbites may have already happened.
Still, even if we don’t get Fisher vs. Saban Round 2 these SEC spring meetings could carry as much importance as they have in many years.
With Oklahoma and Texas set to join the league in 2025, the future of the conference could be hammered out at the Hilton Sandestin this week.
Here’a primer on the various topics expected to dominate the conversations:
Which scheduling model will the SEC choose?
Heading into the SEC spring meetings, the conference is split on a couple different potential scheduling options starting in 2025 when new members Oklahoma and Texas join the league.
Pods (think NFL-like divisions) has been eliminated from the proposals, per SI’s Ross Dellenger.
The league is now considering two main formats: An eight-game (1-7) schedule where schools would have just a single permeant opponent (think Alabama–Auburn) and seven rotating opponents. This would allow every team and fan base to see the entire league every other year.
On the flip-side, it would eliminate a bunch of annual, storied rivalries.
There’s also a nine-game format proposal, where every school would have three permanent opponents, thus preserving more rivalries, and six rotating league games.
For now, divisions seem unlikely but haven’t totally been ruled out.
Expect plenty of horse-trading with whatever format the league chooses. The powerbrokers (i.e., Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Florida, etc.) are in favor of the nine-game format, understanding that it would generate the league even more revenue (i.e. more TV inventory, more butts in the seats) and produce better games. Again it bears repeating, but it would also save important rivalries like Auburn-Georgia or Tennessee–Kentucky.
Notably, Sankey prefers a nine-game conference slate.
The bottom half of the league currently favors the eight-game format, per Dellenger, wanting that extra non-conference game as a potential boost for their overall win-total.
Determining team’s permanent opponents will lead to some contentious debates. What’s equitable? And to whom? Is it fair if Auburn has to play Alabama, Georgia and LSU every year + a rotating set of opponents? No. And other schools will make similar cases.
Compromise and balance will be popular buzzwords this week.
How serious is the league about an All-SEC playoff?
Days before the spring meetings, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported the conference discussing “creating, running and profiting from its own intra-SEC postseason.”
It’s a helluva hyperbolic idea, but Greg Sankey hasn’t been afraid to play the role of Thanos as the sport as a whole continues to undergo dramatic changes.
“As we think as a conference,” he told ESPN on Monday, “it’s vitally important we think about the range of possibilities.”
Four Means More to the SEC than any other conference, so don’t expect Sankey or the league’s ADs to cave on any future eight-team playoff. They were willing to sacrifice for 12, but when talks collapsed, the league began tinkering with ideas about its own postseason tournament.
The early details include an eight-team playoff tournament, likely starting around the same date (early December) as the current SEC Championship.
The question at hand is this merely a leverage play by Sankey and the ADs to essentially threaten the rest of the sport that if they don’t meet back in the middle on CFP expansion then the league will be ready to do its own thing, or are they serious about exploring potential additional expansion (think poaching ACC schools like FSU and Va. Tech, among others), building a super conference and holding their own tournament?
As noted in my #MeansMoreMailbag on Friday, some of the mid-tier programs in the conference (Ole Miss, Tennessee, etc.) could be in real favor of an SEC-only playoff because it would give them an actual chance of making the field — unlike the current four-team format.
The league would obviously benefit greatly financially from an intra-SEC postseason, and could still plot a path to playing someone from The Alliance (Big Ten, ACC, Pac-12) or Big 12 for “national championship.”
Does Jimbo Fisher have anything left to say?
Fisher’s feud with Saban didn’t end after his all-time press conference a couple weeks ago, doubling-down on his refusal to accept an apology in an interview with the a local Texas TV station.
But is that it?
Fisher doesn’t need much prodding to go on another NIL rant, and sharing a table with Saban and Lane Kiffin might make his blood boil again.
After all, he did say, “I don’t mind confrontation. Lived with it my whole life. Kinda like it, myself. Backing away from it wasn’t the way I was raised.”
Please keep talking, Jimbo.
NIL, Collectives, Transfer portal, Oh My!
Like Lions, Tigers and Bears in the Wizard of Oz, expect Sankey, ADs and all the coaches — from football to tennis — to lament the zoo that has been NIL, collectives and the transfer portal this offseason.
It obviously spearheaded the Fisher-Saban feud, but Lane Kiffin, Kirby Smart, Billy Napier and many, many others have offered comments — for and against — various aspects of the three most dominant offseason talking points.
The consensus seems to be that the coaches are in favor of their players getting paid, but they simply want NIL ground rules. They also want transfer windows.
Will they be able to actually craft some sort of SEC legislation for NIL and the portal that the rest of the NCAA opts to adopt?
We’ll see.