SEC Commissioner Worries Potential Schedule Change Could Impact Conference's CFP Bids

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey made his hopes clear Monday. He's in favor of the conference moving from eight games to a nine-game SEC slate, but worries about potential fallout from a schedule shift.

The SEC will play an eight-game schedule next season, but has an important few months ahead to come to a decision for 2026 and beyond. Although Sankey is in favor of moving to a nine-game schedule, the additional conference game, of course, adds one more tally in the loss column for half of the SEC schools.

“One of the issues in the room for our athletics directors is what seemed to matter most, is the number to the right, the number of losses," Sankey said Monday in an appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show. "And how do we understand what that means for our schedule moving forward? I’m one who said I really think we ought to be trying to move toward a nine-game conference schedule. I think that can be positive for a lot of reasons. You watch the interest around conference games. But not if that causes us to lose opportunities.”

Commissioner @GregSankey says he's still in favor of moving to a 9-game SEC football schedule "...but not at the expense of opportunity." pic.twitter.com/Gbq0jneiTe
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) March 3, 2025

Sankey acknowledged that bowl and College Football Playoff qualification is an important deciding factor for the SEC. He's working to understand how the CFP committee came to decisions this past season, the first with an expanded 12-team field. Georgia, Texas and Tennessee represented the SEC in the CFP last season, with Alabama missing out on the final at-large bid in favor of SMU.

The CFP could make tweaks to its new format after the first go-round with 12 teams this past season, which could impact the SEC's scheduling decision. Currently, the five highest-ranked conference champions receive an automatic bid. The four highest-ranked champions receive a first-round bye as the top four seeds. Seven at-large bids then make up the rest of the field.

If the format changes to grant the SEC one or multiple automatic bids themselves, even though the conference champion will all but certainly automatically qualify under the current format, a jump to nine games could become clear.