No More November Cupcakes? SEC to Make Significant Change to Upcoming Football Schedules

Starting in 2027, the SEC's nonconference cupcake games of late-November will be replaced by conference contests.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey on Tuesday announced the conference's scheduling tweak for the 2027 season. | Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

Cupcakes will no longer be on the menu in the SEC on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. The SEC’s athletic directors on Tuesday at the conference’s annual meetings voted to schedule conference games—instead of so-called cupcake matchups against Group of 6 and FCS foes—in the college football regular season’s penultimate weekend starting in 2027.

“That’s the end of cupcake weekend in late November,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, dripping with sarcasm, told reporters on Tuesday at the SEC Spring Meetings. “We never got that one sponsored.”

SEC has taken heat over the years for its nonconference game cupcake weekend

Sankey’s wisecrack is in response to the criticism the SEC took over the years for its scheduling of nonconference games against weaker opponents during the slate of contests before rivalry weekend in late-November. Critics of the SEC’s scheduling feature labeled such cupcake games as would-be bye weeks, and it’s difficult to argue with that characterization, given the results of last season’s games alone.

Week 13 saw the likes of Texas A&M, Georgia and Alabama pummel non-power conference foes Samford, Charlotte and Eastern Illinois by a combined score of 139–3. The year before? Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina bullied the likes of Massachusetts, UTEP and Wofford by a combined score of 171–33.

Yeah, you get the idea.

That means that 2026 will be the final year of cupcake games in late November, when the likes of Alabama, Auburn and Ole Miss will take on Chattanooga, Samford and Wofford in Week 12.

Why did the SEC ditch cupcake weekend and what could it mean for the College Football Playoff?

Late November games like 2025’s Alabama vs. Eastern Illinois, an FCS program, are going by the wayside. | Gary Cosby Jr. / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

It has everything to do with what occurred last August, when the SEC moved to adopt a football schedule with nine conference games, rather than the eight its teams had played.

“It’s [because of] nine conference games and a recognition that you’re populating more weekends,” Sankey said of the decision to cut the cupcake games, according to The Athletic. “And so you really cannot have the odd numbers of open or nonconference dates later in the season. Because then that has a backward domino effect and really plays games early.

“And we ran into some of that in the 2026 schedule. So this allows more of the back-end scheduling and opens some things up so you don’t have that late conflict with either open dates or nonconference games. I think that’s the why.”

In addition to minimizing conflicts, the SEC’s move to a nine-game conference schedule—and inevitable ditching of cupcake weekend—also is an attempt at sprucing up its respective teams’ resumes for the College Football Playoff. The Big Ten and Big 12 had already played a nine-game conference schedule, leaving the SEC’s Week 13 cupcake contests to stick out like a sore thumb when compared to the Big Ten and Big 12’s tougher conference games, particularly with the eyes of the College Football Playoff committee watching.

Not only did the move to a nine-game conference schedule add a power opponent to every SEC teams’ schedule—and cut a potential cupcake opponent—but the SEC is now also ensuring that these games vs. power opponents will take place in the heart of CFP committee’s rankings and weekly discourse. For example, a 27–17 win for Alabama over Missouri rather than a 60–0 Crimson Tide pasting of a poor non-power opponent. To that end, SEC teams are now also required to play at least one nonconference game against a power opponent.

To be clear, the SEC will still play cupcake games. They just won’t be held in late-November anymore, when the words “strength of schedule” are thrown around by rival coaches like the pigskins slung on the field.

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