Texas AD Chris Del Conte confirms SEC working on 9-game schedule

Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte provided some insight into the SEC’s scheduling plans in football for the near future when he spoke on Tuesday night.

According to reporting from InsideTexas, Del Conte hinted that the issue isn’t so much whether the SEC will move to nine games but when.

“We have eight games scheduled right now,” Del Conte said. “We’re working on going to a nine-game schedule, but we have a ways to go with that. I would say this year we have an eight-game schedule. The following year, we have another eight-game schedule. Then we’ll look at going into a nine-game conference schedule.”

That would be consistent with how the SEC has handled scheduling during previous rounds of realignment.

Back in 2012, when the league added Missouri and Texas A&M, the SEC used two years of temporary scheduling to work on and tinker with the more permanent scheduling rotation. There are a lot of parties involved and making everyone happy is almost impossible.

But eventually, the league got to a pretty good place and the permanent schedule rotation went into place in 2014. It continued through the 2023 season intact.

With the addition of Oklahoma and Texas in 2024, though, that will obviously change. For now, the league is remaining with an eight-game schedule in 2024, and full opponents and dates have already been announced for that campaign.

That the same format will likely hold in 2025 is news.

The bigger news, though, is that the league does, in fact, seem to be headed toward a nine-game conference schedule eventually. Another complicating factor that allowing additional time before making that move makes sense for is the collection of non-conference games teams have agreed to.

Some teams have already scheduled four non-conference games in the year 2026 and beyond. A nine-game conference slate could force the cancellation of a game contract or two.

In any case, there’s a lot to look forward to in the SEC. The additions of Oklahoma and Texas next fall should make for a thoroughly compelling conference slate, especially considering the College Football Playoff slate is expanding to 12 teams in 2024.

There are a half dozen teams in the SEC alone that could potentially vie for a playoff bid next year.