re: The SEC is moving to a 9 game schedule, starting Fall 2026

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-Each team will face every other SEC program at least once every two years and every opponent home and away in four years.

SEC teams are required to schedule at least one additional high quality non-conference from the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten or Big 12 conferences or Notre Dame each season. The SEC will continue to evaluate its policies to ensure the continued scheduling of high-quality non-conference opponents.

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I wholeheartedly support this.

The way I think they will do the permanent opponents is that you would have

Power 8:
Alabama
Auburn or Tennessee
Florida
Georgia
LSU
Texas
Texas A&M
Oklahoma

Group of 8:
Auburn or Tennessee
Mississippi State
Ole Miss
Arkansas
Missouri
South Carolina
Kentucky
Vanderbilt

Example:
LSU would get 2 permanent opponents from the power group which would be Texas A&M and either Alabama or Oklahoma then the 3rd permanent opponent will be from the Group of 8 which would be Ole Miss

So 2 permanent opponents from the same group and 1 permanent opponent from the opposite group

Question is who will be Alabama’s second power 8 permanent opponent if they don’t want lsu as a permanent opponent

For me it’s

Texas A&M
Ole Miss
Alabama/Oklahoma

2026 schedule:
@ Texas A&M
vs Ole Miss
vs Alabama / Oklahoma

Then 6 out of the 7 teams:
vs Texas
@ Auburn
@ Georgia
@ Tennessee
vs Missouri
vs Kentucky
vs Mississippi State

Three permanent opponents --

I'm thinking for LSU it will be:

1. Ole Miss
2. Florida
3. Alabama

Those are our three longest running rivalries (consecutive years) now that we won't have played Miss St two years in a row. And they're really traditional yearly games for LSU.

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One negative is that every other year when there are 5 SEC road games there will only be 7 home games.

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From a fan perspective, I’m not gonna lose too much sleep over one less home game against McNeese State or New Mexico. Especially not when we get an extra SEC home game every other year. That trade is totally worthwhile IMO.

The best case scenario would be if we managed to stagger the P4 OOC home/home games such that you play away in years when you have 5 SEC home games, and home in years when you have 5 SEC road games. In that case you’re getting the same number of home games we’ve had historically with the neutral site openers, but with a better home slate.

No telling whether it works out that way though.

This would make more sense without forcing the permanent opponent thing. We have decades worth of rivalries with east/west matchups, along with the cross division rival. A team like LSU getting matched up with a&m and only visiting the swamp, for example, every 4 years doesn’t keep things traditional. On the flip side, playing OU the same frequency won’t really ever develop a rivalry. There are just too many embedded rivalries that come with divisional football to try to maintain, adding teams without that history won’t produce the same results and IMO isn’t worth doing to salvage a few rivalries.

I get that there are only so many structures that work, but I would rather just abandon the permanent opponents.

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and arky is our main rival game

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What, what? SMH Are you from Arkansas or something?

Everything we saw was Bama, Ole Miss, and the Aggies as the 3 permanent opponents. I was always a fan of the Florida rivalry dating back to when I was a kid but hard to argue with the 3 opponents. I still think Bama is on the down swing so I don't mind the 3 opponents we got.