Ranking Each Team’s Annual Rivalry Slate by Difficulty

The time has come at last. Beginning in 2026, the SEC will match its primary conference rival, the Big Ten, and move to a nine-game conference schedule. Along with the elimination of divisions ahead of the 2024 season, the SEC football schedule has been radically reshaped as the sport continues to adapt in the College Football Playoff era. Commissioner Greg Sankey certainly hopes that the move helps make his teams even more competitive for at-large bids, especially with the possibility of CFP expansion to 16 (or more) teams in the near future.

The SEC took a fairly novel approach to its new-look schedule. Each team will face three annual rivals every year between 2026 and ’29, along with six other league schools. As a result, every SEC matchup will be played every two years at minimum, and should a player stay at the same school for four years, he will have a chance to face every other SEC team at home and on the road.

More: Ranking 10 Best SEC Rivalry Games Still Alive With New Conference Schedule—And Five We Lost

The league says it looked to protect traditional and regional rivalries, while also building more balanced schedules with this four-year rollout. In its release, the SEC touted that the “highest opponent average winning percentage for any school in the 2026–29 schedules is 55.67% while the lowest is 46.65%, a difference of only 9.02%.” With the previous model, that difference was 21.56%. The league will look back into its scheduling ahead of the 2030 season, and could reshuffle annual opponents to maintain competitive balance.

While these schedules are quite balanced, not all SEC teams are created equal. Looking ahead to the next four years, which programs are primed to dominate their three annual rivals, and which have their work cut out for them? We’ve ranked all 16 annual matchup slates, from easiest to most difficult.

(All home and road matchups listed are for the 2026 season. If a team plays one home game and two road games in its 2026 rotation, it will play the reverse two home games and one road game the following year.)

Yes, Georgia—the current most consistently dominant program in the Southeastern Conference—got the most manageable draw of annual opponents in the conference. That isn’t to say this is an easy three-game slate, of course. There are very few true walkovers in the SEC, especially in a world where Vanderbilt is a Top 15 program and Mississippi State can thoroughly beat a Big 12 title contender.

Georgia has the benefit of being unable to draw Georgia. The Dawgs don’t get Alabama every year—though in the new nine-game rotation they’ll play the Crimson Tide more frequently than before in regular season play. No LSU, no Oklahoma, no Ole Miss, neither of the Texas schools pop up here. The three choices they get instead are completely logical—all former SEC East rivals, one with which is shares one of the conference’s most famous rivalries (Florida) and another that it faces in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry (Auburn). South Carolina is a local, regular opponent.

If Auburn and Florida were at the peak of their powers, or South Carolina was still enjoying its Steve Spurrier halcyon days, when they were a sharp spur in the side of the Dawgs, this slate would probably be near the top of the list. Instead, Auburn and Florida could both go through coaching changes and program resets in the next four years, while South Carolina has struggled to take a step forward from its late-2024 success. Georgia will be a strong favorite against all three of their rivals for the foreseeable future.

Down the list, Vanderbilt’s surprising Diego Pavia-led surge has some of these slates looking much more difficult than expected. Vandy’s set of games is not without obstacles. Tennessee has become one of the SEC’s more consistently solid programs and is riding a six-game winning streak vs. its in-state rival. Auburn is, at best, a national championship-caliber program, though it hasn’t risen to those heights in over a decade. Mississippi State looks improved in 2025, but is yet to play an SEC game, and historically has its back against the wall as much as any conference program outside of, well, Vanderbilt.

The jury is out on how Clark Lea will handle the post-Pavia world at Vandy, after entering 2024 on a very hot seat. He’s given himself plenty of rope over the last year-plus, and will have a reasonable—by SEC standards—set of annual opponents to deal with over the next four years.

Will Mark Stoops be around for most—or any—or the four upcoming nine-game SEC schedules? That is a fair question, as Kentucky comes off of a deeply disappointing 4–8 2024 campaign and has held serve through three games in ’25. Stoops, who was set to take the Texas A&M job just a few years ago, seems to have hit a skid in Lexington. After watching his brother Bob Stoops retire from coaching fairly early, it would be a mild surprise to see the 58-year-old Mark remain with the Wildcats for the long term.

Kentucky will have some pretty familiar annual opponents as long as Stoops is still plying his trade, with three former SEC East rivals. Tennessee is currently one of the toughest outs in the league. Florida and South Carolina are more difficult to get a read on, and the Gators are very likely to make a coaching change in the near future, barring an impressive turnaround.

The game once known as the The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party is one of the two protected neutral-site annual SEC matchups, along with the Red River Rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas. That is tough news for the Gators, who will continue to face Georgia—currently the class of the SEC—each and every year. The 2026 game will be contested in Atlanta and the ’27 edition in Tampa before it returns to its traditional home of Jacksonville in ’28, following a large-scale redesign of EverBank Stadium.

Kentucky and South Carolina should be winnable games on a regular basis for a decent Florida squad, but the Gators have struggled to field decent squads with any consistency since Urban Meyer was taking them to national titles.

Another former SEC East program in the back end of this list. South Carolina is among the unlucky programs that will need to deal with Kirby Smart’s squad on an annual basis. Florida and Kentucky are two question marks, however. The Gators could reemerge as a national title threat, but they haven’t had a coach last more than four seasons since Meyer stepped down, and Billy Napier appears to be on a similar path.

Mark Stoops’s future with Kentucky is also an open question, though that may be good news for the Gamecocks. While Shane Beamer’s club has a three-game winning streak against the Wildcats entering this weekend’s game, Stoops won seven of eight games in the series between 2014 and ’21.

Forde: Dropping Alabama-LSU Heavyweight Clash Is Most Painful Rivalry Loss

Alabama’s three-team group featured one of the more surprising snubs of the entire release: the Crimson Tide’s annual game against LSU. The SEC opted to protect two more historic rivalries in Auburn and Tennessee as well as a long-running series with Mississippi State that dates back to 1896 with 108 all-time meetings entering 2025.

Auburn and Tennessee can be national championship contenders in any given year. They can also fall apart in spectacular ways, as evidenced by the post-Gus Malzahn Auburn years and the wilderness that Tennessee has waded through for much of the 2000s and 2010s. Mississippi State is traditionally one of the weaker teams in the league.

Assuming Alabama stabilizes under Kalen DeBoer, the Crimson Tide should be one of the most difficult outs in the league—and one that Tennessee will contend with on the Third Saturday in October for the forseeable future, as the SEC made sure to protect the cigar-toting series. Kentucky, meanwhile, looks to be past its plucky prime under Mark Stoops.

And so, this three-game slate hinges on Vanderbilt. Will Clark Lea’s squad remain one of the SEC’s most surprising teams after Diego Pavia has finally matriculated out of college, or will the Commodores return to bottom feeder status? That is the question that Josh Heupel and many others in Knoxville taking a quick peek at the future want answered.

The schedule release takes Missouri back to the future, as the Tigers renew their old Big Eight/12 rivalry with conference newcomer Oklahoma, and add an annual series with another former Big 12 foe, Texas A&M. Mizzou and A&M joined the SEC together in 2011 and played each other in each of their first four years in the league, but have only matched up twice since.

Arkansas left the Southwest Conference before a number of its biggest members left to form the Big 12, so the Razorbacks did not have a ton of history with the Tigers before they became SEC foes, despite being separated by just about 300 miles. The league has tried to make the rivalry happen, with the introduction of the Battle Line Trophy in 2015, though its been quite one-sided with Missouri winning all but two matchups since it became a schedule staple in ’14.

It will be very easy to compare Texas and Missouri over the next four years, as they have the exact same slate of protected opponents, with the only major difference being that the Red River Rivalry against Oklahoma will remain an annual neutral site game played in Dallas.

Texas renewed two of its biggest rivalries when it joined the SEC a year ago. Texas A&M was the obvious one, and that game has become part of a stacked final weekend lineup for the SEC. Arkansas and Texas only played six times between when the Razorbacks left the SWC and Texas joined the SEC—two of which were bowl matchups—but the Hogs never quite found an SEC rivalry with as much animosity as they have for Texas. That game is now protected for at least four years as well.

With the dissolution of divisions, the SEC West is no longer, but the schools that once occupied that division still have some really tough draws with most protected rivalry games falling along those old division lines. The loss of the annual Alabama–LSU game drew plenty of headlines, but the Tigers will have plenty on their plate, with Ole Miss and Texas A&M regularly competing near the top of the league.

Arkansas should be the easiest of the three games, and faces an uncertain future as Sam Pittman’s job status is extremely tenuous, espeically after Week 4’s loss to Memphis. Pittman has fallen under .500 for his tenure as Hogs coach, meaning Bobby Petrino is once again the last coach to post a winning record in Fayetteville.

There are likely a few SEC coaches that aren’t happy with the scheduling news. Because Lane Kiffin is Lane Kiffin, we’re very aware he falls in that camp. Games with LSU and in-state foe Mississippi State are logical. He’s no fan of an annual game with SEC newcomer Oklahoma, however.

“Oklahoma is really disappointing,” he said on the SEC teleconference Wednesday. “We don’t have anything in common with them or our fans. So that doesn’t make any sense at all. And so that’s unfortunate with so many great teams that we’ve played for a long time here, especially from our SEC West years. So that’s unfortunate but it is what it is.”

The injury to OU quarterback John Mateer aside, it looks like OU has turned a corner under Brent Venables, which could be in the back of Kiffin’s mind with this quote. The Sooners are a rough annual draw if they’re operating at full strength.

Life was difficult for Mississippi State when they were regulars near the SEC West basement, and that remains the case in the nine-game schedule era. The Bulldogs draw in-state rival Ole Miss every year, as expected, but the SEC also chose to protect their longstanding rivalry with Alabama. Jeff Lebby may not have minded seeing that fall off the calendar.

As is the case with so many other teams, Vanderbilt is the hinge game. If Clark Lea maintains momentum with the Commodores, this is a murderer’s row.

Fischer: SEC Football Schedule Winners and Losers: Auburn Draws Both Powerhouses

The Iron Bowl was never going anywhere. The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry was also a difficult one for the SEC to take off the annual schedule. Hugh Freeze has his work cut out for him with the two teams that have defined SEC football over the last 15 years remaining on the annual schedule.

Throw in the wild card that is Vanderbilt, and Auburn may have a gripe here, although 13 months ago no one would have complained with regular trips to Nashville. It goes to show that as much as we think we know about SEC football, the sands are always shifting, especially in the transfer portal and NIL era.

This is what Oklahoma signed up for when it left the Big 12, along with Texas, to join college football’s most vaunted conference. The annual Red River Rivalry remains locked in, now a key part of the annual SEC slate in early October. Missouri—a longtime former conference rival of the Sooners in the Big Eight and Big 12—are back on the annual schedule as well.

Time will tell whether the denizens of Norman, Okla. take exception to Lane Kiffin’s comments about the two programs having nothing in common. On its face, his quote was not really a shot at OU—and was more a comment about conference realignment than anything else. Still, lesser statements have been used to spark rivalries. Perhaps we’ll have Ole Miss vs. Oklahoma circled on the calendar as a can’t-miss game in four years, when the SEC reevaluates its schedule.

Arkansas vs. Texas was one of the more under-discussed rivalries renewed with the Longhorns’ move to the SEC. With the schedule release, the Razorbacks will get the Longhorns for the next four years. The league also protects two of its more recent inventions: the Battle Line rivalry with Missouri and the Battle for the Boot with LSU, which became a trophy game in 1996.

Texas and the Bayou Bengals are two of the better bets to be powerhouses for the foreseeable futures—at least, as long as Steve Sarkisian is in Austin, as LSU coaches tend to find their level. Mizzou has been surprisingly consistent since joining the SEC in 2011 and leads the all-time rivalry 11–4. There’s no pushover in this group.

Looking at these slates in September 2025, there are a number of contenders for the most difficult group of annual opponents. What will happen with teams like Arkansas, Florida and Vanderbilt over the next four years is anyone’s guess. On paper, Texas looks like it should be a true power every single year, but as we know, that wasn’t the case for nearly 15 years after Vince Young and Colt McCoy cycled out of Austin.

Based on what we know today, Texas A&M’s schedule is tough to match. Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns look like they’re here to stay, much to the chagrin of those down in Aggieland. Brian Kelly has had a rocky tenure at LSU, but the Tigers remain a threat every year, and the last three coaches to hold his job have won national championships. That is for good reason. Nick Saban created the blueprint that has turned LSU into one of the highest-ceiling programs in the country.

Missouri is just a tough out, and have split the six games that they’ve played with A&M since the pair came over from the Big 12 in 2011. Eli Drinkwitz hasn’t vaulted the Tigers to the top of the SEC, but they’ve consistently brought in explosive players and may take another step in 2025.

Most programs with the aspirations of Texas A&M, which hasn’t captured a national title since 1939, would probably like to work in some more winnable games into their annual matchups, but remember, this is the SEC. With a nine game conference schedule, it truly just means more starting in 2026.

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