The Southeastern Conference gathers for its annual spring meetings in Destin this week as the leagues’s 16 head coaches debate and discuss the upcoming season and the future of the league. The group plans to discuss the future of conference scheduling and how it impacts the league’s positioning in the future with proposed changes to the College Football Playoff.
Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer enters his second season in the SEC and was asked his preference on scheduling eight or nine conference games and how that might impact the Crimson Tide’s scheduling going forward.
“I’m open to whatever, I’m open to hearing the conversations,” DeBoer said. “There are certainly thoughts you have, but I can’t say that they’re concrete in my mind. Yeah, you kind of wonder what would have happened if other people would have had the chance to play our schedule last year, and that would only get tougher. I know if you played a full SEC 9-game schedule, I know from our end, going into this season, we’re playing 10 Power Four games with Florida State and Wisconsin this year on top of the eight (SEC) games. I know we haven’t held back at this point on anything when it comes to playing a tough schedule, non-conference-wise.
“So you would certainly have to look at those things as it applies if you play nine regular-season games that are all in the SEC. The question I have is: how do you really – strength of schedule as you get more and more conference games, how do you really understand what the strength of schedule is from conference to conference? It’s pretty easy with other sports when they play – basketball, softball, baseball, whatever it might be – and you have all these non-conference games. So that’s beyond me to figure out. I’m just going to play the games that we can schedule and adjust accordingly as we change the SEC games, if that’s the case.”
Alabama had the No. 17 strength of schedule in 2024 according to ESPN’s College Football Power Index. The Crimson Tide notched signature wins against the Georgia Bulldogs and on the road against Wisconsin and LSU, but lost to Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Oklahoma, putting Alabama squarely on the bubble for an at-large selection.
The Crimson Tide has scheduling agreements already in place until 2035 with Power Four programs like West Virginia, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Boston College, Arizona, Minnesota and Virginia Tech and a home and home series with Notre Dame.
