In an article about the promotion of Greg Sankey within the SEC leadership structure, one that might peg him as Mike Slive's eventual successor, we got some news about future SEC schedules. Namely, we'll be seeing a lot of them soon:
Meanwhile, the SEC plans to release this week future 14-member scheduling formats for the majority of its fall and spring sports. Larry Templeton, who helps head the SEC transition committee, said football and basketball formats won't be part of that release.
The SEC baseball schedule will stay how it is with 30 games over 10 weekends, so teams will miss playing three conference mates instead of one with the two extra teams. Templeton says he wants to try to talk the coaches into accepting an 11-week conference slate, but he notes that it would be a tough sell.
As for the other schedules, the ADs have another meeting to go through before we'll get a final answer. Templeton expects that they'll be finalized by the time the SEC spring meetings roll around in May. The trick is that, while ADs are normally the ones to set schedules, the league's presidents will get the final say because this affects the permanent rival system. That might be a tacit admission that South Carolina will trade Arkansas for Texas A&M, something that the presidents of both South Carolina and A&M have publicly discussed.
Templeton characterized the discussions as "all over the map", so it sounds like the sessions have been as contentious as expected. Setting a possible May deadline is encouraging, but this feels like one of those things where a compromise can't be believed until it is actually seen.