The SEC’s impending decision to either continue playing eight conference games or move to nine will impact the Pac-12, directly and indirectly, as soon as 2025.

The SEC left its annual spring meetings last week without deciding on its future scheduling model once Oklahoma and Texas join the conference in 2025, though it’ll either be a 1-7 format with a requirement to play at least one Power 5 nonconference game or a 3-6 format without the league requirement to also play a P5 opponent.

There are 35 games scheduled between Pac-12 and SEC teams from 2025-33, including USC hosting Ole Miss and UCLA hosting Georgia in 2025 and Florida playing both Colorado and Arizona State in 2028, and some of those series may have to be rescheduled or potentially canceled if the SEC moves to nine conference games. Meanwhile, the Pac-12 is mulling dropping from nine to eight league games, at least under the current College Football Playoff format through the 2025 season.

“We’re trying to get to a scheduling model that involves playing eight instead of nine conference games because we think that’s better for us,” Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said. “We like the competition of playing other Power 5 schools and we’re hoping to add more of those games, in particular games within the Alliance. If the SEC went from eight to nine conference games, given the number of scheduled games we have against the SEC I have to assume that would free up some of our schools to play games against the ACC and the Big Ten that are not currently scheduled. So I’d welcome that.”

If the SEC moves to nine conference games, some of its teams would have to either reschedule future nonconference series, drop a game to turn a home-and-home into a one-off meeting or buyout of contracts because they’d either have too many nonconference games or because they’d have exclusively Power 5 schedules.

The last college football national champion to play a schedule against what would now be considered exclusively Power 5 teams was Florida State in 1993. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said the number of Power 5 games played by national champions was data the conference reviewed as it decides its future scheduling format.

“We’ve got some great games this year based on our current approach and one of the things I said post-COVID people asked me after the football season what did you learn? I learned that nonconference games are really important,” Sankey said. “I’m not wavering from that.”

Strength of the league

Florida and Georgia would each have 13 games in 2026 — when they’re scheduled to play Cal and UCLA, respectively — and could have exclusively Power 5 schedules in those years as well.

UGA would have a Power 5-only schedule in 2027, 2030 and 2033 and Florida would in 2028 and 2030-32.

“We’ll probably still play 10 or 11 Power 5s at the University of Florida, but I like playing nonconference games,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said.

“I think the SEC should lean into competing against one another as often as possible — in all sports, that’s not just a football deal. We should lean into the strength of our league and it’s what people want to see. Those are the games the fans want to go to, they want to watch on TV, our student-athletes like playing in those games, so we should maximize that.

“If we go to nine and to get to nine if we have to take away the Power 5 nonconference requirement that doesn’t really impact me. We’ll still obviously play Florida State and we’ll probably continue to play the other Power 5 games we have scheduled out. I don’t know that we’ll go to 12 (Power 5 games) but you know what, the world may look totally different then as well. here in a dynamic time of change and the way everything has been my guess is it’s not going to be the way they look going forward. We all need tp be nimble. The fact that we schedule games out a decade from now is kind of ludicrous in and of itself but we’re in a model that forces us to do that. You’d love to see the model adapt over time and maybe we can make a little smarter decisions there, a little bit more current.”

As of last week, Stricklin said he hadn’t spoken to Colorado athletic director Rick George or Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson about their games in 2028.

Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks said he didn’t think they’d maintain future schedules with 12 games against only Power 5 teams. “I don’t think so, but as things evolve and as you look at the criteria of the playoff situation and what’s important, those metrics could change,” Brooks said. “But I think right now we’ve been in more of a mode where it’s been 10 P5s, a G5, an FCS. It’s been up and down a little bit with that and you’ve seen different schedules but that’s kind of been the standard metric we’ve been working off of. Sometimes it can shift to be a nine P5s and a two G5 and an FCS.”

Alabama and South Carolina have two Power 5 nonconference games scheduled nearly every season from 2025-35. Arizona is scheduled to play Alabama in 2032-33, when Oklahoma would no longer be a nonconference series for the latter.

Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne suggested the Crimson Tide could add more, creating exclusively Power 5 schedules, which Nick Saban has long advocated for.

“Starting in ’25 we have two Power 5s almost every year all the way to ’35 and we’ve been having some discussions with other programs about additional ones,” Byrne said. “So we’re going to continue to hopefully create good content for everybody involved.”