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The SEC is beefing up its football schedule, announcing Thursday that athletic directors have approved a nine-game conference slate beginning with the 2026-27 season. The move puts the SEC in line with other major conferences and directly responds to the College Football Playoff committee’s increased emphasis on strength of schedule.
“Some of the work by the CFP (committee) so far this year is progress,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told The Paul Finebaum Show. “It’s not a destination, but the honoring of schedule strength that’s been communicated is really important for the Southeastern Conference. Being leaders in college football, continuing to play games against non-conference opponents at a high level, in addition to the nine games, I think that’s a representation of fulfilling that leadership responsibility. That’s not something that’s done every place.”
With this change, the SEC joins the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 in playing nine conference games each season. The ACC now stands alone among power conferences with an eight-game format.
The New Format: How It Works
Starting in 2026, each SEC team will face three permanent rivals annually while rotating through six other conference opponents each season. This structure ensures teams will play every other SEC program at least once every two years and host each opponent once every four years.
The conference is also mandating that each school schedule at least one non-conference game against another Power Four program (or Notre Dame) annually.
Not everyone’s thrilled about it.
“Not everyone agrees,” Sankey admitted. “I’m certain that our coaches are concerned about the competitive aspect. We’ve got to continue to improve the selection process for the postseason.”
The additional conference game creates more physical demands on players — something that’s raised eyebrows among coaching staffs across the league. However, Sankey believes the benefits outweigh these concerns, particularly in preserving historic rivalries while creating more competitive balance.
“We’re uniquely positioned to honor those historic rivalries,” he explained. “So those become annual opponents on a schedule, not everyone has three, but that’s the basis.”
Playoff Positioning: It’s All About the Resume
This schedule overhaul comes as the CFP introduces its enhanced “record strength” metric in 2025 — a system that rewards wins against quality opponents while being more forgiving of losses to strong teams.
By playing more conference games and maintaining focus on quality non-conference matchups, SEC teams will have additional opportunities to build impressive resumes for playoff consideration.
“The full clarity on how strength of schedule will be honored in the selection process would be important to us,” Sankey said. “We’re at an eight-game schedule this year; we’ll have a second opportunity to see how selection decisions are made. You know, the opening few weeks of the college football season and non-conference games are important. That can’t be understated.”
Sankey has been vocal about changing the playoff selection mentality beyond simply avoiding losses.
“What I think we have to acknowledge is the CFP process has said, ‘Don’t lose,’” he noted. “I don’t think that’s healthy for college football. And the ability to take this step to say it’s more than just, ‘don’t lose’. It’s about playing high quality opponents, that being honored, yes, you have to win games. That’s some of the work that needs to progress.”
The Playoff Expansion Debate
While the SEC has made it clear they prefer a 16-team playoff format (potentially with five automatic qualifiers and 11 at-large bids), they haven’t taken a formal position on the Big Ten’s more ambitious proposals for 24 or 28-team models.
Sankey emphasized that any larger expansion would require extensive evaluation of several factors — player health and safety, total game count, stadium capacities, TV considerations, and the economics of conference championships (an event he remains “bullish” on).
“That’s why our view is, we go back to what we said [at SEC Spring Meetings], that 16 is an appropriate model for expansion,” Sankey explained. “If there are other ideas, there’s a lot of due diligence that needs to be done before we move in that direction.”
