Now that the News of Texas and OU to the SEC in 2024 is official, the attention will turn to how the conference will structure their schedule.
This article will lay out a POTENTIAL way the SEC could lay out the future schedule for the teams in the SEC and then we will zero in on what that would means for the Texas Longhorns.
I am going to assume the SEC will adopt a 9-game schedule with the 3-6 format that has been discussed. This format will make the SEC and ESPN the most money.
Step 1- Two Tiers of Teams- A and B
Folks are not going to want to hear this but there are two tiers of teams within the new SEC.
Group A- Highest Value Programs 1-8
Group B- High Value Programs 9-16
Recently Forbes published a value for the top 25 teams in college football. The following SEC teams were on this list:
Texas
Texas A&M
Alabama
Oklahoma
Georgia
Florida
Auburn
LSU
Tennessee
South Carolina
Arkansas
Ole Miss
Not Listed
Missouri
Kentucky
Mississippi St.
Vanderbilt
I know the Tennessee folks are going to have an issue being #9 on this list and they have a right to complain. The value case between 6-9 is extremely small. There will be some regional advantages for Tennessee to be #9, so I am going to stick with this list.
The two groups are then shown on the table to the left. From this point forward we will simply refer to the groups as A and B.
Step 2- Setting each school's permanent rivals
The reason we did step one first is that it impacts the rivals each team has.
Group A schools- Two Group A permanent rivals and one Group B permanent rival
Group B schools- One Group A permanent rival and two Group B permanent rivals
This system was discussed in the SEC meetings as a mean to ensure the biggest schools ALWAYS play each other - I think.
Prioritizing rivalries is extremely subjective. I am sure I got some of these wrong. The school officials can send their choices to the SEC office and then they could set something better from there (I assume this is already done.)
Without going into too much detail here is how I set each school's permanent rivals. Teams in the yellow are the Group A teams.
In most cases, every school's TOP rival (as I researched it) was protected. In general, when in doubt; I went with the oldest and/or closest rival. I should also say here, even if a school is not a permanent rival that one plays EVERY year, the non- permanent rival schools will play every other year.
Some schools did not really have three top rivals or the third for one school already was allocated three rivals that school deems more important.
I then split the remain schedule in two - a C and a D schedule if you will accept them being called that.
SEC Master Schedule
The teams in red font are the Group A teams. I set a home and road rotation for the permanent rivals. Road Games in 2024 are shaded in orange. Two neutral site games are shaded in bright blue.
The Schedule C and D teams will be split into two groups for each team. Let's call them C1, C2, D1, and D2. Each of these will be the same three teams. A school will play their schedule thusly:
What This Could Look Like for Texas
In the master schedule I did not define the C1/C2/D1/D2 breakdowns for every school, but one could do that. For Texas the schedule could look something like this.
There you go Longhorns fans. There is an example of what your schedule would look like for the next four years. Let's put it into an actual week by week schedule including the non-conference games.
That is what the future schedule looks like Longhorns Fans! It is going to be tough, but a lot of fun.
Read my thoughts about the SEC and how Austin makes a difference (written on Alabama game day 2022).
Read my take on why Fox caved and the 2024 deal got done.
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