The SEC’s newcomers face vastly different outlooks in their first seasons as league members
• 7 min read
There’s no such thing as a “light” SEC football schedule. Even if a program loads its nonconference slate with proverbial cupcakes, once league play starts, things are always a grind week in and week out.
That’s true for every school, no matter preseason expectations, and it’s not getting any easier. In fact, that aforementioned grind looks more like a downright slog with Texas and Oklahoma joining the fold, further increasing the profile of one of the country’s premier conferences.
Those two combined for seven of the last nine Big 12 championships and represented their former conference in the College Football Playoff four times in that span. Those are big fish adding their weight to a big pond.
With the addition of the Longhorns and the Sooners comes a change in scheduling philosophy for the SEC. Divisions are a thing of the past, meaning more open matchup opportunities for the current eight-game format in conference play.
While some rivalries are seemingly preserved and others featuring Texas and Oklahoma revived, the 2024 season will bring its fair share of fresh face-offs. Even though each team faces a high degree of difficulty in a conference where at least half of the schools are feasible College Football Playoff competitors, some programs got the short end of the stick from the SEC’s scheduling department.
Here’s how each SEC school’s respective strength of schedule stacked up, ranked from most difficult to least.
