Commissioner Greg Sankey and the folks in the SEC offices in Birmingham, Alabama, know Chris Del Conte’s feelings by now.
Del Conte would like to see Texas football and its 15 SEC peers move to a nine-game conference schedule.
“It’s like Bengay or an atomic bomb, I’m applying constant heat on this particular subject with our friends at the SEC,” Del Conte, Texas’ athletic director, said at a town hall event Wednesday night. “We need a ninth game. We’ll see if that happens but we’re working towards that.”
Sankey told reporters in New Orleans last week that there’s “a lot of interest” from the SEC in moving to a nine-game conference schedule. In 2025, SEC teams will play eight conference games and four nonconference games — that’s already been decided. But the league could make the move as early as 2026. It is probably not a coincidence that 14 members of the league, including Texas, have three or fewer nonconference games scheduled for next season.
Adding another conference game would come with obvious financial benefits for the SEC’s programs, and would align the league with the scheduling format used by the Big Ten and the Big 12.
And Del Conte has another reason for being so staunchly in favor of the move: The Longhorns play a neutral site game with Oklahoma every year.
“One year we get four (home conference) games, one year we get three,” he said. “If we had a nine-game schedule, it’s four and four and we play our rival at a neutral site.”
Del Conte said that a move to nine conference games would not impact his desire to schedule nonconference games against the biggest brands in the sport.
Ohio State, Michigan and Notre Dame are all on Texas’ schedule in the next four years.
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This content is reposted from the source: https://www.statesman.com/story/sports/college/longhorns/football/2025/02/27/texas-football-schedule-2025-sec-9-conferece-games/80702571007/
