SEC’s Going to 9-game schedule, Will feature 3 contests vs. annual rivals: Here’s how it will work

[MisterGopher]

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6568408/2025/08/22/sec-football-annual-rivals-schedule/

They finally landed the plane.

Four years since the debate over going to nine games heated up, and more than two years after SEC commissioner Greg Sankey compared the decision to landing a plane and saying he hoped to do it that week, they finally did.

The SEC announced on Thursday that it is officially going to nine games, ending a long-running saga with a vote of school presidents. Now comes the saga within the saga: Who are each team’s three annual rivals?

The nine-game format has two main components:

• Three games against annual opponents.
• Six games against non-annual opponents, rotated such that everybody plays each other twice in four years, home and away. (Other than neutral-site games: Georgia-Florida and Oklahoma-Texas.)

This format will begin in 2026 and will be on a four-year cycle. Sankey said over the summer, and sources reiterated Thursday, that the three annual rivals could be revisited. That gives the conference flexibility to change those annual opponents — either because rivalries evolve, or because competitive or financial needs evolve.

 

[Some guy]

Would prefer this model of scheduling for the big ten.

Play 5 every year. Play the other 12 home and home over 6 years.

would hope gophers would get iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois, northwestern

Penn state, Ohio state, Michigan, Michigan state, Indiana, Purdue, Rutgers, Maryland, Oregon, USC, UCLA, Washington.
Visit them all once every 6, host them once every 6

If you went to 10 conference games. Play 3 every year. Host the other 14 once every 4 years.