As college football seemingly lays the foundation for changes every year a big one is heading to the SEC next season.
Texas and Oklahoma will officially be migrating from the Big-12 over to the SEC, bringing over two of the most storied programs in college football to the most storied conference.
Alabama has had recent run-ins with both programs as it clashed with the Sooners in the 2018 College Football Semifinal as the Crimson Tide secured the 45-34 win. Last season Alabama escaped Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium with a last-second 20-19 victory over the Longhorns.
Recently, Nick Saban has made a claim for the redistribution of balance in the SEC as it expands, but on Wednesday at SEC Media shared excitement for the arrival of both programs.
“Oh I think it’s a great addition to the SEC,” Saban said. “You have two great programs that have great traditions that have great fan support. I think it just continues to sort of — the map of the SEC, it is stronger than ever. I think the competition is going to be — it’s always been difficult. It’s going to be even more challenging because you’ve got two really, really good programs who have consistently, if you look at the past, have been, you know, Top-10 programs for a lot of years, won national championships.”
In June, the SEC released its schedule model for the 2024 season which kept the requirement of each team to play eight conference games, but the league is still developing a long-term format going forward. Those details still need to be ironed out, but Saban believes that more competitive games will only benefit the fans despite the challenge it will create for the coaches.
“So they are going to add a lot to the competition,” Saban said. “I think with the new scheduling that we’ll have in the future, it’s more good games for fans, more diversity in who you play. So there’s a lot of positives about it. From a coaching standpoint, it’s going to be much more challenging to be able to compete week-in and week-out. I think when you look at the SEC, the thing that separates it is not the top, but the depth, how many good teams there are.
“There was one year where I think we played nine teams — when we won the championship that we played nine teams that were in the Top 15 or something, I can’t remember the year. A lot of that was playing good teams in the playoffs, we played a good team in the SEC Championship Game but you also played a whole bunch of good teams throughout the course of the season and that’s one of the biggest challenges I think to be able to play with a level of consistency when you have six, seven or eight really difficult games, as opposed to two or three.
“Because consistency and performance and playing at a high level becomes a premium, which in all sports, that’s always a challenge. You know, how are we going to play this day, and how are we going to accept this challenge and do it week-in and week-out.”
Before the two Big-12 powers officially become members of the SEC, Alabama will complete a home-and-home series with Texas this fall as it welcomes the Longhorns inside Bryant-Denny Stadium on Sept. 9.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
