Saturday afternoons are going to be a bit different this year. The SEC is no longer on CBS, so the mid-afternoon time slot won’t bring you the best matchups from the best conference in college football with Brad Nessler and Gary Danielson.
This year, CBS’s 12-year contract with the SEC expired, so the conference’s best games will be moving over to ESPN and ABC for the foreseeable future. Back in 2020, in preparation for the expiration of CBS’s deal, the SEC inked a 10-year contract with ESPN worth $3 billion. ESPN is now the exclusive rights holder of all SEC football and men’s basketball games until 2034.
The network and ABC will get up to 15 premier SEC football games a year along with the SEC championship game. Each week, ESPN will feature a late-afternoon kickoff game and will have the option to select an SEC game for ABC’s Saturday night primetime slot. ABC will air the SEC championship game in the late-afternoon window.
The SEC’s TV deal, which earns the conference $300 million a year, along with the expansion to include Oklahoma and Texas in the conference has set up the league to be a continued powerhouse unlike the Pac-12 and ACC which struggled to land ideal TV contracts. The Pac-12 already fractured because of it and Florida State and Clemson are desperately searching for a way out of the ACC.
The reported $3 billion investment from ESPN rose above that figure as ESPN reportedly helped Oklahoma and Texas leave the Big 12 with “transition” payments to both schools to lessen the burden of the $160 million they stood to lose over the conference realignment.
For Georgia fans, not a lot will change, other than seeing Texas and Oklahoma sporadically pop up on the schedule and watching those games on ESPN instead of CBS. Fans will likely also be able to stream games on ESPN+.