Mark Stoops is all too familiar with how the SEC currently deals with its teams’ conference schedules.
While other Power 4 conferences, like the Big Ten for instance, play a 9-game conference schedule, the SEC has stuck to an 8-game league schedule. Two of the biggest questions — or some might say controversies — circling the SEC football world right now have to do with the future of the College Football Playoff and the question of playing 8 or 9 conference games.
Kentucky’s head coach weighed in on the latter issue during his time with the media on Thursday at SEC Media Days in Atlanta. He spoke to reporters, and he also did an interview with SiriusXM College Sports Radio, when the topic of how many league games that SEC teams should play came up.
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“I understand the position of (SEC commissioner) Greg (Sankey) and the leadership of this conference and the presidents of our institutions. They have to pay the bills. (But) what college football fan wouldn’t want to see 9 (conference games)? You’re going to eat your own. That’s what people have to weigh,” said the longtime leader of Kentucky’s football program who’s been in Lexington since 2013.
Here is the full clip of Mark Stoops’s take on the SEC schedule issue:
Stoops knows that playing 1 more league games per season will have a compounding effect on each team. In other words, the annual SEC football gauntlet would only be more arduous with 9 games instead of 8. But Stoops isn’t backing off his opinion, even if it only makes things harder for Kentucky football.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
