The SEC is going to vote on a new model for its football schedule soon. The league is expected to go to 9 conference games after Texas and Oklahoma become members in 2024. Each team will likely have 3 permanent opponents and rotate through the other teams every year.
If that happens, conference commissioner, Greg Sankey is expected to ask ESPN for more money for those extra games that are not included in the deal the SEC and Disney will begin in 2024.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban has expressed his displeasure with LSU likely being one of the Crimson Tide’s permanent opponents. The consternation is also being felt in Louisiana, where some LSU fans have expressed reservations about playing a perennial top-ten Alabama team year in and year out.
On his podcast for The Volume this week, 104.5 ESPN’s T-Bob Hebert said that it doesn’t matter what coaches or fans think. The SEC has to deliver that game every season.
“TV revenue is driving everything,” he said on Snaps with Aaron and T-Bob. “Are you really going to go in front of the Disney brass, in front of Bob Iger, and go ‘Hey Bob, we want a hundred million dollars more, but we don’t really want to play LSU/Alabama anymore’?”
He recounted the game’s significance since Nick Saban, who coached LSU to a national championship in 2003, arrived at Alabama in 2007. Hebert — a former LSU offensive lineman — noted that it is the one game CBS regularly put in a primetime slot and many times, it paid off with new viewership records for college football on the network.
ESPN itself has a history with the game. In 2012, ESPN: The Magazine dedicated an entire issue to LSU and Alabama’s November matchup.
T-Bob Hebert was incredulous at the idea that Saban or the conference thought they had any leg to stand on in trying to dictate that the game would bot be a regular part of what ESPN can offer its audience.
“You’re gonna sit in a char? You’re gonna tell Disney that in a time when they’re already upset about spending – GET THE F*** OUT OF HERE!”
