What Do the SEC's Changes in 2024 Mean for Kirby Smart's Georgia Bulldogs?
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ATHENS - Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs are getting ready for a different Southeastern Conference soon. The news that Oklahoma and Texas would arrive in the SEC in 2024 was hardly a surprise.
That’s a year earlier than the Big 12’s agreement with the Sooners and Horns was set to expired. But everyone involved wanted to get to “yes” in terms of starting the new SEC and new Big 12.
So what does that mean for the future? There are still a slew of questions that have to be answered, and time is running out.
1. Will the SEC Move to a 9-Game League Schedule in 2024?
There is a lot to break down here, but at the end of the day the answer is probably yes. First, Disney, which has the rights to all of the SEC starting in 2024, does not have to pay more for more games. That’s something the SEC and Disney would have to agree to. And in the past that didn’t happen with CBS.
That network stayed did not change its agreement with the SEC after the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012. Instead of adjusting the low-ball $55 million per year, CBS held firm. It was no surprise the SEC didn’t continue that relationship for Tier One rights when the that contract expires.
Now the SEC will put all of its games on Disney properties - that means ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and the SEC Network. Because of the move to Disney full time, the SEC and the broadcaster will both want to create more value. And more value means more games.
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The addition of Texas and Oklahoma into an eight-game SEC schedule would mean 128 SEC games in a season. But a move to a nine-game schedule would mean 144 games over the span of the season. That’s a little more than one additional league game a weekend.
There’s real value in games like that verses games like Georgia-UMass or Tennessee-Bowling Green.
On Friday, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told WJOX that the league hasn’t “arrived at a destination between eight or nine games.” He went on to add: “The sooner the better, now that we have clarity around the expansion.”
The sooner the better should be applied to everything the league is trying to figure out right now.
2. Will the SEC Move to a One-Division Format?
This seems the most likely thing that will happen in 2024. Why? It is hard to figure out another way to place teams into divisions that are East and West when two of the schools are coming in from the West, and one of them (Missouri) doesn’t belong geographical in the East anyway (Vandy is West of Auburn, but whatever).
A one-division SEC allows the two best teams to play one another in the SEC Championship, which isn’t going anywhere. The expansion of the College Football Playoff means more than two SEC teams are likely to get into the CFP. Getting the two best teams in the SECCG means the SEC will usually get the No. 1 overall seed as well as the No. 5 seed.
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The other thing about the one-division format is that it allows for more teams to play each other more often. Sankey told WJOX he heard about teams not playing at certain locations a lot.
“Let’s rotate our teams through campuses with greater frequency. We saw games last year - Missouri at Auburn, for example - that hadn’t been played since we added Missouri back in 2012. The one that sticks out in most articles is Georgia hasn’t traveled to College Station since Texas A&M’s been a member. That shouldn’t happen,” he said. “We shouldn’t be going twelve years between campus visits. With the prominence of our universities, the strength of our football programs, the visibility around our teams, we should be rotating our teams through more frequently.”
But we have seen that. Alabama and Georgia have played more often in SEC Championship Games (2012, 2018 and 2021) as they have in the regular season (2015 and 2020). Right now, because of the divisions, we see more Missouri-Georgia than Georgia-Alabama.
The last five SEC-owned Georgia-Bama games have averaged 2.7 million viewers. The last five SEC-owned Georgia-Missouri games have averaged 13.1 million viewers. For the record, 2.7 million isn’t a horrible number for other leagues - it just doesn’t compare to what “could” be happening.
So we will see what could be happening more. Its what everyone wants anyway.
3. Who are the Three Teams Georgia Would Get in the 6-3 Yearly Format?
It for three decades the SEC has had two divisions with and eight-game schedule. A nine-game schedule sure seems looming over the league. That said, we know what would happen in an 8-1 schedule for Georgia - the Dawgs would play the Gators each season, and shuffle through the rest of the league in an unbalanced way - playing eight teams one year, then two teams again, and then the other six teams that had not already been played. That’s a strange, unbalanced format.
The 8-1, which no one behind the scenes is really suggesting will happen, would also leave for some strange and so-called rivalries. Who would be Tennessee’s “rival”? I wouldn’t be Georgia, Florida or Alabama. Would it be Vanderbilt or Kentucky? Who would be South Carolina’s? What about LSU, Texas A&M and Arkansas? 8-1 is a very hard cookie cutter for the 16-team league.
6-3 makes much more sense, and there are fewer problems to handle. That said, who would be Georgia’s final foe? We know Auburn and the Gators would be two of the three teams Georgia would play in the future. But who would be the third?
Tennessee? Pretty unlikely. The Vols have to slice up Alabama, Florida, Vanderbilt and Kentucky. It looks like Tennessee will keep both Bama and Florida and will have to figure out which of the Cats and Dores they will have to drop.
That leaves three teams for Georgia - South Carolina, Kentucky and Vandy. Carolina will make clear that they will want to keep playing Georgia each season. I’m not as certain Kentucky and Vanderbilt will make the same case, but it is possible. Georgia has been playing those two each year for decades, and UGA fans help sell tickets in both Lexington and Nashville, which is still important.
But this is about what TV wants, and equity in the league. Florida and Auburn are not going anywhere. Those games are too big for TV to ignore. These types of games are the reason Disney is paying so much for the SEC package. The third team is harder to pinpoint.