Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart hints at potential resolution to league schedule debate
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Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart said at a media event on Friday that athletic directors around the SEC are preparing to discuss the conference schedule during their meetings later this month and expect some resolution on the “8 vs. 9 league games” question to come from those meetings.
The SEC will play 8 league games during the upcoming 2025 season. What to do beyond this fall has been hotly debated for months. Barnhart told reporters on Friday that a decision needs to come soon.
“The 8/9 conversation is difficult. There’s a good conversation in the room,” he said. There’s an economic component to it, as it relates to television, for sure. I think that decision obviously has to come pretty quickly. We’ve got athletic directors meetings in August. There’s probably a pretty good chance that’s on the docket and then some decision comes out of that.”
For Kentucky, Barnhart says the decision ultimately comes down to math. Kentucky wants the opportunity to have as many as 8 home games in a given season. A 9-game league schedule makes that challenging.
In odd years when the Wildcats play 5 road conference games, they’d have to ensure each of their 3 nonconference games was at home. Kentucky also has to work around the annual alternating series with Louisville out of the ACC.
“There’s no mystery on where I stand,” Barnhart said. “Eight’s better for Kentucky. There’s obviously financial components to it, there’s competitive components to it, there’s components to it as it relates to our ability to have 7 home games or 8 home games. We’ve been fortunate about every 2-plus years, we’ve been able to have 8 home games. … If we have 9 conference games, the chances of doing something like that get a little bit harder for us.”
At SEC Media Days last month, commissioner Greg Sankey told ESPN he believes a 9-game league schedule is in the best interest of the league going forward.
The future of the league schedule is ultimately tied to the College Football Playoff. The SEC has expressed support for a 16-team playoff that features a “5+11” format. The consensus within the Big Ten is that a different model would be more beneficial, and several people in the conference reportedly wouldn’t even consider a “5+11” model unless the SEC moved to a 9-game league schedule to match the one the Big Ten currently plays.
“We’re going to continue to evaluate whether increasing the number of conference football games is appropriate for us,” Sankey said at Media Days. “And as I’ve said repeatedly, understanding how the CFP will evaluate strength of schedule and even strength of record is critically important in our decision-making.”
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
