College football hasn’t always been known for being a fast-moving sport. The SEC expanded to 12 teams in 1992 in order to be able to play a conference title game. Aside from one league picking up some pieces from another that fell apart, it took until the ACC in 2005 for another power conference to follow suit. The Big Ten and Pac-12 didn’t get there until 2011, a whole two decades later.
Change has come much more quickly of late. The transfer portal, NIL, and the one-time transfer rule hitting in rapid succession has been revolutionary, and we’re still figuring out what all the ramifications will be.
It’s entirely possible, though, that future fans will look upon 2024 as the proper beginning of the new era.
We already knew that it was going to be the first year of USC and UCLA in the Big Ten. And then later on we learned that it would be the start of the 12-team College Football Playoff. And now as of this week, we know it’ll be the start of Oklahoma and Texas as SEC members.
“Power conference” didn’t have a truly firm definition until the BCS gave it one: a league with an annual automatic bid to a BCS game. There were six of those.
The Big East’s football side got picked apart and then spun off into the AAC shortly before the Playoff era, and so we got the current “Power 5” label in that system.
The sport is about to stratify even more. The SEC and Big Ten will tower above the rest, and this week’s deal keeps the B1G from having a year’s head start in that regard. The ACC, Big 12, and Pac-12 will exist in a middle zone, after which you’ll have what we now call the Group of 5.
The 12-team Playoff will sooner or later generate its own nomenclature as the two systems before it did. It’s hard to say what that’ll be because the postseason picture is being pulled in two different directions. It’ll be easier than ever for a non-perennial power from those middle conferences or even the top of the G5 to make the bracket. However the massive difference in resources between the top two conferences and the rest will make it harder for anyone to win titles from outside those two leagues. The latter won’t manifest immediately, but over time the advantage will compound.
As far as the SEC itself goes, 2024 has already been established as the first season in which ESPN will own all the TV rights from top to bottom. We get one more year of the SEC on CBS, and then it’s all the Worldwide Leader thereafter.
The schedule will undergo its biggest change arguably since ’92 because it almost certainly go to nine games. The topic of playing an extra game per year has come up from time to time, but there’s never been a catalyst to do it like there is now.
The league narrowed down its options last year to two division-less, pod-less formats: and eight-game schedule with one permanent opponent and seven rotating ones (1-7) or a nine-game schedule with three permanent and six rotating opponents (3-6).
The 3-6 is the favorite to win out because the conference has a group of core historic rivalries that it has always sought to protect. Much of the weirdness that’s been in the scheduling format since 1992 can be seen as a long-running attempt to preserve the Alabama-Tennessee series. Birmingham won’t let that one, or the so-called Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry between Auburn and Georgia, fall away from being annual affairs so easy. In a 1-7 format, either those games have to go or the Iron Bowl and Cocktail Party have to go. There’s no way to make 1-7 work without major sacrifices.
The three permanent series from the 3-6 format are enough to keep all of those old, core rivalries going each year, plus allowing for both Texas-OU and Texas-Texas A&M to be annual as well. Especially if ESPN decides to pay more for more SEC inventory, the 3-6 format is a no-brainer.
One issue I haven’t seen discussed much is how the six rotating games will work. They could be either in blocks or interleaved.
With blocks, everyone completes six home-and-homes with half the rotators and then completes home-and-homes with the rest. Suppose Florida’s three permanent opponents are Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Using purely alphabetical order as an example, UF would play full series with Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, LSU, and Ole Miss in 2024-25 and then Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, and Vandy in 2026-27. The blocks rotate from there.
With an interleaved schedule, there are teams coming and going every year. For example, the second iteration of the SEC’s 12-team slate had two rotating opponents. One of those changed each season. Going alphabetical again, you can imagine UF playing Alabama at home and Arkansas on the road one year. The next year, the Gators would play Arkansas at home and Auburn on the road. Then they’d get Auburn at home and Ole Miss on the road, and so on.
Multiply that rotation system by three, and that’s what we’d be looking at. Having thought about it now, I think I prefer interleaved to blocks just because it means there will always be something fresh on the conference schedule each season. I have no way of knowing if the league office has gotten that far and if so, what it thinks on the matter.
Regardless of rotation details, the 2024 season will be a massive shift in college athletics. The SEC and Big Ten will get bigger and richer, the Playoff will get bigger and more lucrative, and the SEC on CBS will be no more. The NIL and transfer markets will be a couple years more mature, which will allow folks to get a clearer picture on how they’ll work in the long haul. It’ll be the single biggest turning point season in college football in a long time.