SEC, ESPN Lose if League Goes to Nine Games

Hard to find benefit for either in adding additional conference games

Author:
Kent Smith
Publish date:
Jun 1, 2023 9:41 AM EDT

In this story:

FRISCO, Texas – The talk this week down in Florida is whether the league is going to abandon a schedule featuring eight games in favor of nine SEC games.

There's not a lot of discussion to be had here. The few people who think getting nine games is going to generate this long list of additional big time games are living in a fantasy world. The SEC currently schedules high profile non-conference games. Alabama played Texas last year, LSU took on Florida State, South Carolina closes with Clemson. The upcoming games between Arkansas and Oklahoma State are a big deal and games against Notre Dame are also on the horizon.

If SEC coaches suddenly have to play an extra SEC game, guess which games are going away. The home and home series and neutral site games against quality opponents are the ones that are going to disappear. Arkansas isn't going to add a game against Georgia in Athens and cut a home game that is close to a guaranteed win to also travel to Notre Dame or out to Stillwater. That's probably a big reason why we're not hearing ESPN step up to the plate with a stack of cash to make it happen.

It's not switching Arkansas vs. Arkansas State for Arkansas vs. Vanderbilt. It's giving up Arkansas vs. Notre Dame in Fayetteville. The house is going to be as packed for ASU or more as it will be for Notre Dame, so why potentially saddle Sam Pittman with a loss if a win can be closer to guaranteed at the same cost.

Over in Tuscaloosa, the Tide aren't giving up one of only two chances to breathe for a moment and get portal hungry back-ups playing time against Louisiana-Monroe and Eastern Illinois in 2025 so Alabama can travel to Columbia to play South Carolina. Everyone will lose Alabama's road game at Florida State to open the season instead.

ESPN exchanges large national audiences in both cases for smaller region-centric viewership. That helps no one. The SEC teams need those bigger national games for recruiting purposes, it's easier to win non-conference games, and it hurts way less in the long run to lose an early season game against a high profile non-conference team than take a potential SEC loss.

If Alabama loses to a surging Florida State team in August, but makes the SEC title game to end the season, the odds of making the playoffs are still there. However, if the Tide were to lose to perhaps Georgia as a new permanent opponent and miss out on going to Atlanta, then the odds go down that Alabama's getting into the playoffs.

This idea that other conferences are trying to peer pressure the SEC teams to play nine games because they play nine non-conference games is silly. The Pac 12 isn't playing five teams in the Top 15 on their conference slate. The SEC had three teams in the Top 6. The Pac 12 only had one in the Top 10 – Utah, which lost to a Florida team that went 3-5 in the SEC and 6-7 on the year. The Utes don't sniff a bowl game in the SEC, much less a Top 10 ranking. Their big win was against a USC team that got gave up 46 in a loss to Tulane and they lost to an Oregon team that nearly got completely driven out of football when they stumbled their way out of a 49-3 loss to Georgia in the season opener. Unless you're the Big Ten, don't come bragging about your nine conference games.

Going to nine games is going to cost the conference money both in payouts to get out of big games already scheduled and financial loss of at least one SEC team not earning a payout from the playoffs because half the league has to take a loss with the required extra game. It's also likely that at least every other year, an SEC team is going to lose the chance to host a home playoff game, costing that school a ton of potential revenue. It just doesn't make financial, nor competitive sense.

Those early high profile non-conference games prove the SEC is a mile above the best in the other conferences. If Utah hasn't proven it can't even beat the tenth best team in the SEC and Oregon doesn't get to show that it's barely within half a hundred of an elite SEC team, then both get the consideration that they deserve the chance to prove they're not as good as SEC teams. That knocks a better SEC team out of the playoffs. People currently discuss the conference possibly getting five teams into the playoffs because not only is there a chance to show the conference is better at the end of the season, it is strongly driven into everyone's minds at the beginning as well.

That prestige and a lot of money goes out the door with a nine game schedule. It also hurts ESPN's bottom line ultimately. For a company that is struggling financially, that's not something ESPN wants to take on. Everyone wants to talk about how it will improve the inventory, but by adding additional options with Texas and Oklahoma, there already is additional inventory. That gives ESPN the chance to work with teams to ensure higher quality games during each week of the season while pushing more games like Arkansas vs. Western Carolina to ESPN+, driving up subscriptions.

There's simply no benefit to a nine game schedule for anyone other than teams from other conferences looking to pressure a handful of weak-minded athletics directors into convincing their fellow SEC leaders and presidents into making it easier for Mid-3 schools like USC, North Carolina and Baylor to make the playoffs. Without that guaranteed extra loss to half the SEC, it's way harder for teams from their leagues to get in, much less advance out of the first round.