Enjoy this year's Alabama-Chattanooga and Auburn-Samford games on the second-last weekend of the campaign because the late-season mismatch will disappear from the SEC schedule starting in 2027.
SEC athletic directors voted Tuesday to play conference games on the penultimate weekend of the regular season, ending the longstanding tradition of some SEC schools scheduling a lower-division opponent ahead of rivalry weekend.
"That's the end of cupcake weekend," Sankey said, per ESPN's Heather Dinich at the SEC meetings in Florida. "We never got that one sponsored, though."
Sankey noted that the SEC had been discussing the change for months. With the league expanding to nine conference games this season, he said it became even more important to load the back half of the schedule with rivalry matchups.
"It's nine conference games and a recognition that you're populating more weekends," Sankey said, according to Brandon Marcello of CBS Sports. "And so you really cannot have odd numbers of open or non-conference dates later in the season because then that has a backward domino effect in where you place games early. We ran into some of that in the '26 season."
Ole Miss and Mississippi State join Alabama and Auburn in hosting FCS opponents in Week 14 on this year's schedule, with the Rebels playing Wofford and the Bulldogs facing Tennessee Tech. That's down from six teams playing lower-level competition during that week in 2025.
However, the decision won't end the SEC-versus-FCS matchups entirely and will instead move them to earlier in the season, when most schools typically play those contests on the schedule.
SEC members are also required to play one non-conference game every year against a Power 5 program. While that falls in line with traditional rivalries like Florida-Florida State, South Carolina-Clemson, and Georgia-Georgia Tech, it requires other members to find opponents to satisfy that stipulation.
