Former SEC Quarterback Criticizes New SEC Football Format

Former SEC quarterback Matt Jones, who played for Arkansas from 2001 to 2004, was among those critical of the new football format for the SEC in a recent interview.

With Oklahoma and Texas joining the SEC next summer, the SEC will eliminate divisions and will become a 16-team league, with the two highest ranked teams in the conference being sent to the SEC Championship game.

During spring meetings this year, the conference decided on a temporary eight-game conference schedule for each team with no divisions. The former Arkansas quarterback is not a fan of the new format for SEC football.

“How do you have a conference and it’s called SEC East and West and you’re adding Oklahoma and Texas and you’re not going to play everybody in your division? I just don’t understand that,” Jones said during theinterview on Halftime with Phil Elson and Matt Jones, who run ESPN Arkansas' midday radio show.

Jones also was not a fan of the idea that the SEC champion would have to play just nine teams from the conference.

“How do you have an SEC conference with, so it would be 16, 18 teams and how do you have a champion when everybody’s not playing…it’s not even right,” Jones said.

“You gotta have your East and West. Everybody has to play everybody in your division to have a champion. You can’t just say, ‘Hey, we’re going to put 16 teams in this division and you’re only going to play 9 of them and then you can still win the division.’ I think they’re making it up as they go along.”

Jones made these comments before it was officially announced that the SEC would move forward with an eight game schedule. However, it was widely speculated at the time that divisions would be eliminated regardless.

Later on in the show, a caller presented a counter argument to Jones' opinion: What about when one division is weaker than the other? Jones responded by saying that the SEC can set up rules to where teams that might have been more deserving would have a better chance to play in the SEC Championship.

“To have a champion, if you’re going to have ten teams in the division then everybody should play everybody," Jones said. "If you’re going to have 18 teams then you gotta divide it up… It’s not a real champion to say ‘Well, we only played 68 percent of the teams in our division [and] we’re the champion.’”

The SEC will announce its 2024 football schedule on June 14. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told reporters during SEC Spring meetings that the conference's scheduling format will be re-evaluated in the near future.