Kalen DeBoer talks Alabama football roster retention for 2025
Here’s what Kalen DeBoer said about the Alabama football roster heading into 2025.
The SEC cares so deeply for its rivalries. Enough to keep secondary rivalries on the long-term schedule? We’ll see.If SEC persists long term with eight-game schedule, that puts secondary rivalries like Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee in jeopardy. A nine-game schedule format allows room to keep more key games.The “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” is long on history, but other rivalries have been much better for the past decade.
The SEC cares so deeply for its rivalries that it once built its interdivisional schedule model around preserving the Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee games. And those matchups don’t even rank as the No. 1 rivalry for those schools.
Then, the SEC built an eight-game conference schedule model for the 2024 and 2025 seasons that retained primary and prominent secondary rivalries after the conference expanded to 16 teams.
The two-year schedule format to accommodate Oklahoma and Texas joining the league served as a stop gap while conference brass continued to mull a long-term schedule plan.
SEC officials have, for years, debated increasing from an eight- to a nine-game conference schedule. The league membership consistently decided to stay at eight.
The SEC must soon consider that age-old question again, with a scheduling solution needed for 2026 and beyond.
The SEC spring meetings, which begin May 27, offer a stage for the schedule debate to revive. Oklahoma and Texas could help tip the vote to approve expansion.
The rivalry tentacle attaches to the debate. A nine-game conference schedule offers avenues to annually retain not only primary rivalries, but also secondary rivalry games. Continuing with an eight-game schedule probably would mean dialing back…
Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/sec/2025/05/22/sec-football-rivalries-ranking-schedule-format/83598314007/
Author :
Publish date : 2025-05-22 10:02:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
