How to watch SEC football 2024 schedule release show
The Arkansas Razorbacks football team will learn its 2024 schedule, along with the rest of the SEC, in a primetime schedule release Wednesday night.
With the addition of Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12, the conference is now a 16-team league. That change led to a new scheduling format that is temporary for the 2024 season.
SEC presidents and chancellors agreed on the new one-year schedule format at the SEC spring meetings in Sandestin Beach, Florida, on June 1. Teams will play eight conference games, plus one required opponent from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 or major independent during the 2024 season.
"We have been engaged in planning for the entry of Oklahoma and Texas into the SEC since the summer of 2021, but the change of the membership date from 2025 to 2024 creates scheduling complexities that can better be managed with a one-year schedule," SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a release from the conference.
There will no longer be East and West Divisions, meaning the SEC Championship Game will feature the top two teams in the conference standings at the end of the regular season. This format allows each school to play every other school a minimum of two times in a four-year period, regardless of whether the SEC utilizes an 8-game or 9-game format for future conference competition.
"Creating a one-year schedule will provide a longer on-ramp to manage football scheduling around existing non-conference commitments of our members," Sankey said. "It will also provide additional time to understand the impact of an expanded College Football Playoff and engage with our media partners as we determine the appropriate long-term plan for SEC football scheduling."
With the one-year, eight-game schedule format, each SEC school has one permanent conference foe and seven rotating opponents. If the league were to move to a nine-game format, there would be three permanent opponents and six rotating.
According to Peter Burns of the SEC Network, each SEC team will play either Texas or Oklahoma once in the 2024 season. That lines up with a report from 247Sports that stated Arkansas is set to host Texas in Fayetteville in 2024.
Arkansas fans might remember well the most recent time that the conference decided to utilize a temporary schedule change, when the Hogs were dealt what Athletics Director Hunter Yurachek described as the toughest schedule in college football history for the 2020 season.
Somehow, the SEC decided to give the Razorbacks matchups with SEC East foes Georgia and Florida, which was far from a balanced draw for the Hogs, who were under first-year head coach Sam Pittman at the time.
As of now, the only conference opponent Arkansas is guaranteed to play is Missouri for the Battle Line Rivalry game, which is usually played on Black Friday.
The four non-conference opponents are already set, as the Hogs will open against UAPB on Aug. 31 at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. Arkansas will hit the road for a tough test at Oklahoma State on Sept. 7 and then it will host UAB on Sept. 14. Louisiana Tech rounds out the non-conference slate on Nov. 23.
As for the rest of the schedule, take your pick. A matchup with Texas A&M seems to be a safe bet, as the teams still have a contract to play at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, that is supposed to run out after the 2024 season.
The schedule reveal show is set to begin at 6 p.m. CT on the SEC Network. According to the SEC Network schedule for Wednesday, the show is set to span from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. CT.