SEC moving to new scheduling format for the 2020 college football season
The decision from the league office in Birmingham has been made, the Southeastern Conference has officially changed its schedule for the 2020 college football season.
The SEC has moved to a 10-game conference-only schedule for the upcoming college football season with the season being pushed back until Sept. 26. John Talty of AL.com was the first to report the news.
AL.com is reporting the that official announcement will be made this afternoon.
This news comes after the ACC, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 have all made similar moves in recent days and weeks.
According to Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated, the 2020 SEC Championship Game is slated to be held on Dec. 19.
UPDATE: The SEC has confirmed these reports, the league is moving to a 10-game conference-only schedule for the 2020 season.
That sucks. No non-conference games and another month without football.
I don’t like this at all. If they want to push the conference schedule back, so be it, but teams should still be allowed to play nonconference games prior to that. The virus will be with us at least until there is a vaccine. Waiting a few weeks to start the season is a big fat nothing.
Yeah I was hoping for at least the plus one schedule. Considering the teams in the southeast they could have stayed regional and made that happen.
going to destory these small schools, that count on that money..for some it’s their entire athletic budget…
yeah they are going to have a hard time surviving this
Small schools should follow the Ivy League and just take the fall off and re-evaluate after the first of the year. Without fans, anyone not a power 5 team is going to sink like a lead balloon.
I think that is another part of the reason why they didn’t have the non-conf games. With empty stadiums revenue will be cut dramatically. Kind of hard to stomach paying several hundred thousands of dollars for a cupcake game with no one allowed in the stadium.
I remember when the season regularly started the last week of September, and the schools didn’t begin practice until September 1. They played 10 games in 11 weeks, which if it went according to schedule would end on December 5. Since the Championship Game is looking at December 19, then I guess there will be two off weeks. If the SEC is smart, everybody will have the same two off weeks so games can be made up if possible. Of course that would be a bummer to have no SEC games on those weeks, but it would give the teams the best chance to get 10 games in.
I like that idea of having teams all having their bye weeks at the same time.
Well I don’t understand the move to 9/26 but guess it makes sense to those who have been studying things for the last several weeks. Must feel like the curve will be on a bigger do9wnward trend… Anyway it is what it is. At least it sounds like we will have football. Now lets get a schedule we can start jawing about.
It looks like we Vol fans are going to be adding Ole Miss and LSU to our schedule.
Now I really want to see what the schedules will be.
Going to be a weird rivalry week with no UGA-GT, Uf-FSU and USC-ClemPson
Why can’t Big 12, SEC and ACC schools near each other play? The travel would be less than Fla going to A&M for example. Tech and UGA, UGA-Clemson, SC-Clemson, UT-UNC. UK-UofL, Mizz-KU, Ark-OU or OSU. Bad choice.
Agree 100%
All the conferences want to keep the game revenue to themselves with the shortened season.
Hard to believe they didn’t keep the plus one (and thought they would go 8). Seemed perfect for the standing rivalries and the rest of us already with ACC/Big 12 games ex AL and A&M. That said, we’ll see just how far into the season we actually get.
I don’t understand the delay until the end of September. Looks like no OU game either. Dang. Wonder what the schedule will look like??
My understanding is that the schools are expecting a spike of Covid once school starts, so they are delaying the start so that a bunch of infections at start of school won’t leave teams short handed.
The current consensus by scheduling. TN will add Ole Miss and LSU to the schedule.
Figured it would be A&M before LSU no?
The loss of the Oklahoma game, which was scheduled to be played in Norman Oklahoma is a good thing for the Vols. An early season loss to the Sooners would not have helped the team’s psyche.
I mean it’s almost like a f u to the NCAA who just granted a waiver to start the season sooner. SEC is like watch this.
This does jack to stop the virus, they are just throwing crap against the wall to see what sticks. How does Florida playing Texas A&M instead of FSU help prevent the spread of COVID?
This is nothing but a delaying tactic in an effort to salvage the season. Make no mistake that all decisions made on the season have had and will continue to have everything to do with the money and nothing to do with the health of student-athletes or the health of the general public. What factors will decide whether or not their plan was successful? Will it be how many games get played? How much money they are able to distribute to each institution? Or will it be the number of cases that the conference projects will be prevented by putting this plan into action versus what would have happened if they had played the season as originally scheduled?
We all know it won’t be the latter.
I agree with you. We play Mizzou in Columbia. GT is barely 70-75 miles from Athens.
I agree. What I was saying previously about ND playing in ACC. This has less to do about safety and more about money I would say.
Bizarre that they didn’t elect to keep SEC-ACC rivalry games, especially after the ACC left the door open.
I guess it’s because the teams not playing rivalry games would just schedule a cup cake, or someone from another region and it would be uneven or risk more exposure.
Slowly but surely moving toward a canceled season.
I think that could be the reason the SEC is going to be the last conference to start the season… They’re going to let the others test the waters..
Yeah that could be a reason for the delayed start. I really want a season to happen but even very controlled environments in the MLB and NBA with their “bubbles” are having issues. I just don’t see a college football season happening especially with seemingly little oversight of the players and the beginning of the fall semester which spells imminent disaster.
To my knowledge MLB isn’t using the “bubble” technique — hence the recent outbreaks (e.g. Miami Marlins). The NBA, on the other hand, is enforcing the “bubble” approach, and because of this has yet to have any outbreaks — not even onies, twosies. I do understand, however, this is an ever-changing situation and all I’ve said could be proven incorrect by lunchtime today.
I know the NBA has had at least a couple because it was on the news about them breaking quarantine…
The NBA hasn’t had any outbreaks that I know of. Lou Williams had to quarantine because he left the “bubble” but that is the only one. There haven’t being any outbreaks at the bubble and the NBA has done a good job monitoring it.
The NFL will have already begun their season and the SEC might learn a few things from how those games/virus-case-management have gone. My thinking is that delaying the start is a good thing…but none of us like it.
Think they should cancel Iron Bowl and swap them out for another East team, should go for egg bowl, and UT/ Vandy Too…Enough teams to completely scramble the schedules and make it fair to all schools who lose chance to stick it to instate rivals…
If this is what it takes to actually have a season, then so be it. Not ideal but 1000 times better then not having a season.
Completely agree.
@boxster
Amen to that.
Yep …
There might be one other positive out of this. Starting the season later eliminates a lot of the hurricane and severe weather days in September. There were very few postponed games back in the days of 10 game schedules that began at the end of September. The majority of postponed and cancelled games are in the first two weeks of the season.
Delaying the start to late Sept is all about ‘wait and see’ if covid flares with student arrival on campus, and to see how NFL and other sports leagues experence and respond to outbreaks. Plus, easier to cancel the season if the Universities and pro leagues flounder admid uncontrolled infection rates.
SEC only schedule is all about the money. Nothing else. Ehh, i’ll be happy just to have any kind of college football this year.
Only because I have beaucoup faith in karma will I say what is truly on my mind. So I’ll just say, suck it b*tches and I mean all you a holes that would do anything to crash this administration. RTR and fAuburn.
So …
Why can’t GA still play GT, or FL v F St, SC v Clem(p)son??
They are all In state rivalries
I thought the reason for conference only was to limit travel – I don’t think that’s much of an issue for most non-conference games. I’m fairly certain that it’s closer for Clemson-Carolina to travel than Carolina-Arkie or Mizz! I guess the ACC will be bailing out ND and letting them “identify” as a Conference member in football!