Steve Sarkisian Accuses The SEC Of Cannibalizing Itself With Schedule

2026 marked the first time that the Southeastern Conference had all teams schedule nine in-conference games on their schedule after years and years of having only eight on the 12-game schedule. Midway through his first year with Texas in the new format, Steve Sarkisian believes it was a bad move.

During his weekly media session, Sarkisian explained that he and many other coaches in the conference “had some reservations” about moving to the ninth conference game.

“The 16 head coaches in our conference, I think we all had some reservations about going to the ninth conference game, for a variety of reasons,” Sarkisian said, via Anwar Richardson.

His first was the physical toll that playing against other SEC teams takes on a team versus non-conference opponents.

“One is the obvious one. That’s one more game of the physical pounding that this league takes its toll on you with, right? So we all want to be at our best. We all want to be as healthy as we can be, we all have aspirations of making the playoff. And you want to be at your best if you can make the playoff and have a full roster available. We’ve all, I mean we’re no different than a lot of the other teams, we’ve all suffered some pretty significant injuries along the way.”

Steve Sarkisian gave a compelling response when @CedGolden asked about the SEC’s nine-game schedule and its impact on the College Football Playoff.
“That’s eight more losses for our conference. Any way you slice it, it’s eight more losses.”
Sarkisian raised a legitimate… pic.twitter.com/fYJCO9cSdW

— Anwar Richardson (@AnwarRichardson) October 29, 2026

More isn’t better.

Sarkisian’s second reservation was the increase in losses that the conference would sustain. He pointed out that it guarantees eight more losses spread among the conference, which hurts them in the national title picture.

“I think the other reservation about the ninth game was that’s eight more losses for our conference,” Sarkisian said. “Any way you slice it, it’s eight more losses. So if you are fortunate enough to be part of that discussion from the committee, how much is the committee going to value one more conference game in the SEC, right? And what does that look like?

“Because here we are last week at the halfway mark of conference play and every team already had a loss. And there’s really good teams with multiple losses already. So what is it really going to look like when there’s 9-3 SEC teams compared to 10-2 or even 11-1 teams from other conferences? How much value is going to be placed in that. I think that’s why we were so adamant about if we’re going to go to nine conference games let’s go to nine when we expand.”

Sarkisian is far from the only major figure in the SEC to make such an argument. LSU head coach Lane Kiffin has also argued against such an expansion.

To their credit, the SEC teams continued to show dominance against their non-conference foes. The 16 teams are a combined 38-2 against non-conference opponents and more than half of its members are currently ranked in the top-25.

It may not help them this year, when there are still just 12 teams in the College Football Playoff. But once the expansion comes, the SEC might find that its willingness to play harder games more often helps more than it hinders.

This story was originally published by The Spun on Oct 29, 2026, where it first appeared in the College Football section. Add The Spun as a Preferred Source by clicking here.