Tennessee’s Phillip Fulmer on new SEC schedule: ‘There’s so much to think about’
Kentucky football is scheduled to play host to LSU in 2021 and at Ole Miss in 2022. Under the SEC’s new 10-game conference-only schedule, both those games could be happening in 2020.
Phil Fulmer appeared on WNML’s Knoxville afternoon sports talk show with Jimmy Hyams and John Wilkerson last Friday. The Tennessee athletic director said schools may play the two “non-permanent” opponents from the opposite division in the rotation.
“I think it makes some sense to do that,” Fulmer said. “That was discussed. Many models will be looked at in the next week or so. Hopefully next week we’ll have an answer to that. The method that the commissioner sent was to be fair and equitable. Now what does that look like? And how do you get there?”
Mississippi State is Kentucky’s permanent opponent from the SEC West. UK is scheduled to play at Auburn in 2020. That means the Wildcats’ two additional opponents would come from a pool of Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. Kentucky played host to Arkansas last season. It played at Texas A&M in 2018.
[Kentucky football’s future schedules]
Fulmer was asked the benefit of the 10-game, conference-only scheduling adopted for 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I like it that there’s control of the flexibility of the games,” he said. “It’s really interesting. We have eight games now, and those could change. Not the home and away, but the dates could change. There’s so much to think about in all this with the TV partners and obviously our fans. The big question is who on the other side are you going to draw to play.”
He dismissed the idea traditional rivalry games with ACC opponents were scrapped because of money or protocol differences.
“With the ACC, it would have been more about scheduling,” Fulmer said. “They have very similar protocols that we have or will have. Their commissioner and ours have communicated really well — and other conferences. I think it’s actually more about the flexibility of just playing conference games. I think we’ve ended up in the right place for this one year.”
Fulmer said he liked the idea of two open dates, especially the one at the end of the year. He said that date was kept open because of possible make-up games. “With COVID you don’t really know what’s going to happen,” he said.
As for fan attendance at Neyland Stadium, where UK was originally scheduled to play on Nov. 7?
“I don’t think there’s any question there will be reductions,” Fulmer said. “I’m kind of holding out and hopeful we can get the curve to kind of turn back down in maybe a month and maybe during the season it could continue to get better, but we also know it could continue to get worse. I don’t want to put a number out there right now. We’re working on several models.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 1:34 PM.
