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Kirby Smart on college football’s future
Kirby Smart urges leaders to prioritize the game’s future over personal or conference agendas in playoff talks.
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Light the cigars, folks, and score a noteworthy step toward the preservation of SEC rivalry games.
A longstanding discussion point around SEC circles has been that, unless the conference moves to a nine-game conference schedule, prominent secondary rivalry games like Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia could fall off the annual schedule.
But, there’s a conference schedule model on the table that would preserve multiple annual rivalry games for at least some SEC schools, even within an eight-game conference schedule format.
Alabama-Tennessee, Auburn-Georgia and Texas-Texas A&M are among the rivalry games that could be preserved within a continued eight-game format.
The rivalry games for those teams would come in addition to other rivalries like the Iron Bowl, Florida-Georgia and Oklahoma-Texas.
“We’re attentive to real, key rivalries, and we have (eight-game) models that can accommodate those,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Tuesday.
The conference eliminated divisions after expanding to 16 teams with the additions of Oklahoma and Texas. That prompted a renewed look at schedule format and rivalry preservation. Debate on the SEC’s schedule continues among stakeholders this week at the conference’s spring meetings.
Two years ago, the conference considered two primary schedule models: An eight-game model that would preserve only one rival per team; or, a nine-game model that would earmark three annual rivals per team.
The nine-game model would have assured Alabama would keep playing the Iron Bowl and the “Third Saturday in October” game against Tennessee, after which the victorious team lights cigars.
For Georgia, the nine-game model…
Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2025/05/27/alabama-tennessee-rivalry-auburn-georgia-schedule/83661700007/
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Publish date : 2025-05-28 00:30:00
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