Greg Byrne may need to revisit Alabama's non-con slate after SEC's 9-game shift

In a major move, the SEC announced on Thursday night that it would be moving to a 9-game league schedule, effective next season. Other power conferences, particularly the Big Ten, have been pushing for the SEC to make this move for quite some time. The SEC finally felt comfortable following the College Football Playoff committee's updated guidelines for teams that included heavily weighing strength of schedule. League commissioner Greg Sankey and the SEC's ADs must trust that those guidelines are going to continue.

Along with the announcement of nine conference games, the SEC took it one step further by announcing that every team in the league would then be forced to play at least one additional non-conference opponent every year from either the Big Ten, ACC, Big 12, or Notre Dame. Eat your heart out, Curt Cignetti.

Under the nine-game format, each program will face three annual opponents and six that rotate year-over-year. For Alabama, two of those opponents are guaranteed to be Auburn and Tennessee. The third remains up in the air, but will likely be either LSU or Mississippi State. It should be Mississippi State, but it will probably be LSU.

Alabama's future schedules will be among the most difficult in the nation, every year

It comes with the territory of playing in the SEC that you are going to play a difficult schedule every year. But it just got that much more challenging with the addition of a 9th high-level opponent every year. And a 10th thanks to the SEC mandating a P4 or Notre Dame on each schedule.

That won't be an issue for Alabama. The Crimson Tide has two additional P4 opponents on the schedule every year between now and 2034. It will be interesting to see if all of those matchups stick, or if Greg Byrne will decide it is in Alabama's best interests to play two smaller schools to go along with 10 power four games. Byrne made these future schedules with an eight-game league slate in mind.

Alabama's future non-conference schedule is as follows:

2026: at West Virginia, USF, Florida State
2027: West Virginia, at Ohio State
2028: Ohio State, UT Martin, at Oklahoma State
2029: at Notre Dame, Oklahoma State
2030: at Georgia Tech, Notre Dame
2031: Georgia Tech, at Boston College
2032: Arizona, at Minnesota
2033: at Arizona, Minnesota
2034: at Virginia Tech, Boston Collge
2035: Virginia Tech

Looking at the scheduled dates for these games, something will have to give in 2028. Alabama will either have to cancel one of their non-conference games - Ohio State (9/9), UT Martin (9/16), Oklahoma State (9/23) - or the Crimson Tide would open the season with an SEC game on 9/2. That wouldn't be completely unprecedented in SEC history, but it has been quite some time.

Alabama certainly won't run from a fight, but Byrne will need to assess whether it's in the best interests of the Crimson Tide's playoff future to play an additional game against a high-quality opponent than everyone else.