Observations regarding the outstanding SEC schedule, wins, and losers...

This is an opinion column.

After The Finebaum Show concludes, the evening’s special programming begins.

In the Central time zone, it is 6 p.m. We’ll be done by eight because sixty or ninety minutes wouldn’t do when the 2024 SEC football schedule is revealed. The SEC Network’s 120-minute program adhered to the growing practice of turning emails into entertainment items.

But this marks the start of a new era that goes beyond Oklahoma and Texas’s accession to what was already a formidable region.

Greetings from the SEC television programming Monopoly Era.

CBS has decided to stop manipulating the ESPN empire’s schedule. This week, it was said in a low voice that there would be no more game-of-the-week at 2:30 p.m. outside the family.

Even before the 7,200-second SEC Network disclosure on Wednesday night, the Disney tentacles were already in motion.

A few game dates were made public on Monday Night Football on ESPN.

Several more were revealed during the Manning Cast alternate MNF broadcast on ESPN2.

Then, the Georgia at Alabama game date was unveiled on the Wednesday edition of Good Morning America on ABC. Even more notable, a kickoff time and network were attached to that unboxing.

During the previous season’s dark ages, CBS would have been first to get the opportunity to host this Tuscaloosa matchup between the two league-dominating shows of the previous ten years.

The four-letter network may now safely say that the game in Tuscaloosa on September 28 will air at 6:30 p.m. CT on its three-letter father since that arrangement has expired. Alabama vs. Georgia will now air in primetime on ABC, the broadcast network owned by the same company as ESPN, rather than being a midafternoon shoo-in.

The kickoff time between Missouri and Vanderbilt should only be known to the victor of a Disney World treasure hunt that is shown exclusively on SEC Network Plus in order to maintain the synergy.

Anyway, there’s some advantage for fans to this new absence of competition in the broadcast realm.

If CBS making its first pick isn’t a barrier, you could be able to schedule your fall vacations more than two weeks in advance.

Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the SEC, actually stated on November 30 that they anticipate having “right around half” of the league’s entire schedule scheduled for particular broadcast times.

“By collaborating with ESPN, ABC, and the SEC Network, our campuses and supporters will be able to organize ahead of time instead of basing their six- and twelve-day events around that early kickoff,” Sankey stated prior to the SEC Championship game.

Instead of waiting and wondering about the full broadcast day, we’ll have some flexibility in scheduling, with a slight hourly difference between the midday and primetime games. Excellent query, and I’m quite happy about the prospects with Disney, ABC, ESPN, SEC Network, and even the ESPN+ streaming service in the future.

That is good news, then.

Here are a few more observations based on the main points of the announcements made on the SEC Network on Wednesday night.

— Without the pastries to start, the Iron Bowl will seem very different. The Saturday before the state title game was traditionally used to play a nobody, but the SEC scheduling had other ideas.

Alabama, instead of its customary dip in the FCS pool, will head to Norman to play Oklahoma seven days before Auburn’s visit. The Tigers, meanwhile, get a home date with a Texas A&M team they’ve beaten just once in the previous four seasons. Perhaps the Aggies will present a more respectable challenge than New Mexico State next November.

The quirks of the calendar and the constellations creates one of those seasons with two open weeks for each team. With that comes a race to see who everybody gets a rest before playing who.

Auburn didn’t catch much of a break by getting a break before heading to Missouri on Oct. 19 and before hosting Louisiana-Monroe on Nov. 16. There’s a joke here but I’m taking the high road because it could cut either direction and nobody really wins.

Alabama’s are timed more favorably. After playing at Wisconsin in Week 3, it gets to hit pause the following Saturday before Georgia visits Week 5. The other bye is wedged between an Oct. 26 home date with Missouri and a Nov. 9 trip to LSU.

Everybody got screwed.

Part of the deal that comes with the eight-team league schedule is a required Power 4-to-5 opponent. Which of the 16 teams has the most challenging step outside the family?

Notre Dame at Texas A&M is spicy. Make that interesting.
LSU vs. USC in Las Vegas sounds like trouble in more than one way.
Cal at Auburn sounds about as entertaining as it did last year.
Florida plays both Miami and Florida State to bookend the 12-game march for Billy Napier’s job.
Georgia-Clemson in Atlanta likely sounded more exciting when they scheduled it.
Ole Miss plays at Wake Forest.
Alabama at Wisconsin will be a fun little clash of cultures.
But it’s Texas at Michigan that takes the prize. Half of this year’s playoff field/a potential rematch of the national title game is a bold scheduling decision for Texas. You could have said the same this year but it was that win at Alabama that got the Longhorns into the semifinal.

– Georgia has more of a challenge on tap without the East Division and its gifts of Vanderbilt, South Carolina and, before this season, Missouri.

Instead, road trips to playoff teams Alabama and Texas along with New Year’s Six bowl-participant Ole Miss will test the Bulldogs more than the pre-December schedule this season.

There’s plenty more to discuss but you don’t need another 120 minutes snatched from your Wednesday.

We have plenty of time to discuss this step into a new era of SEC football between now and Labor Day weekend.