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SEC Sports
Schedule superlatives: The toughest, easiest and most interesting matchups of 2025
We break down which teams face the biggest challenges and which have the easiest roads ahead.
The discussions surrounding the future playoff format bounce around like a pingpong ball. Schools are for the first time in history sharing revenue with athletes. Conference realignment marches onward, and the overhaul of rosters via the transfer portal continues at a dizzying pace.
All the while, the start of the 2025 season is less than a month away.
What that means is it's time to take a magnifying glass to the 2025 schedule and hand out some superlatives, some flattering and some not so flattering. All rankings referenced are from ESPN's post-spring Top 25, and Notre Dame, although an independent, will be considered a Power 4 school for our purposes.
Before we dive in, an annual reminder: Schedule strength tends to look a lot different in July than it does in late October.
Toughest overall Power 4 schedule: Florida
A year ago Billy Napier and his Florida football team epitomized resiliency. Despite an ugly 1-2 start, Napier never lost the locker room and guided the Gators to four straight wins to end the season with an 8-5 finish. But just like a year ago, Florida's schedule is again brutal.Billy Napier and the Gators face another tough road with the hardest Power 4 schedule. Melina Myers/Imagn Images
The Gators are the only team in the SEC facing the league's three highest-ranked preseason teams (No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Georgia and No. 6 LSU), with the Georgia and LSU games away from home. The Sept. 13 trip to LSU is followed by a trip to No. 21 Miami the next week. In a five-week stretch from Sept. 13 through Oct. 11, which includes a bye on Sept. 27, Florida plays at LSU, at Miami, at home against Texas and at Texas A&M. The Gators' annual showdown with Georgia in Jacksonville on Nov. 1 is followed by back-to-back SEC road games against Kentucky and No. 24 Ole Miss.
Wisconsin is a close second in this category. Luke Fickell and the Badgers could use a strong bounce-back season after losing five in a row to end 2024 and missing a bowl game for the first time in 22 years. Like Florida, Wisconsin faces six ranked teams, including four of the top 11 -- at No. 9 Alabama on Sept. 13, home against No. 5 Ohio State on Oct. 18, at No. 8 Oregon on Oct. 25 and home against No. 11 Illinois on Nov. 22.
Toughest Power 4 home schedule: Mississippi State
Jeff Lebby, in his second season, will lead the Bulldogs against four playoff teams from a year ago at Davis Wade Stadium: Arizona State on Sept. 6, Tennessee on Sept. 27, Texas on Oct. 25 and Georgia on Nov. 8. If that's not enough, the Bulldogs close the season at home Nov. 28 in their annual Egg Bowl matchup with No. 24 Ole Miss. Nearly 80% of Mississippi State's roster is made up of first- or second-year players with 60 new players added for this season.Easiest Power 4 home schedule: Texas
Only one preseason Top 25 team will visit DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium this season, and that's at the very end when No. 23 Texas A&M makes the 105-mile trip to Austin. After opening against No. 5 Ohio State on the road, Texas plays San JosƩ State, UTEP and Sam Houston the next three weeks at home. Other than Texas A&M, Texas' other two home dates the final month of the season are against Vanderbilt on Nov. 1 and Arkansas on Nov. 22. In an odd twist, Texas doesn't play a game in Austin in the month of October. Florida, Kentucky and Mississippi State are all on the road, and the Red River Showdown game against Oklahoma, as always, is in Dallas.Easiest Power 4 schedule away from home: Missouri
The Tigers play eight of their 12 games this season at Faurot Field, and only one of their four road games is against a ranked opponent, No. 25 Oklahoma on Nov. 22. The other three are against Auburn (Oct. 18), Vanderbilt (Oct. 25) and Arkansas (Nov. 29). It's never easy on the road in the SEC, but the Tigers are avoiding some of the most treacherous stops.Toughest three-game stretch: Oklahoma
The criteria for this category are three games in three consecutive weeks with no byes. Brent Venables and the Sooners will have a chance to build some momentum, but they face an October grind that could break any team. It starts with No. 3 Texas in Dallas on Oct. 11, followed by a road game at No. 13 South Carolina on Oct. 18 and then a home game against No. 24 Ole Miss on Oct. 25. If you want to stretch it out to four games, things don't get much better for the Sooners. They go on the road the next week to play Tennessee on Nov. 1 in Neyland Stadium. Three of those four games are away from home.Dabo and the SEC
Clemson's Dabo Swinney gets another shot at the SEC to open the season in the Battle of Death Valleys on Aug. 30 against LSU. Clemson is 18-12 vs. the SEC since the start of the 2012 season, but the Tigers have lost seven of their past 10 games to SEC opponents, beginning with a 42-25 loss to LSU in the 2019 national championship game.Avoiding campuses: Tennessee
Tennessee, for the 11th straight year, will not play a nonconference regular-season game on an opposing team's campus. The last time the Vols played a nonconference road game (not counting the playoff game last season at Ohio State) on the opposing school's campus was Sept. 13, 2014, when they lost 34-10 to No. 4 Oklahoma in Norman. The Vols did win at Pittsburgh in 2022, a 34-27 overtime victory, but the Panthers play their home games at the Steelers' stadium, Acrisure Stadium, formerly known as Heinz Field, which stands along the Ohio River on the north side of Pittsburgh. The opener against Syracuse in Atlanta will be Tennessee's sixth neutral-site game in the past 10 years.Vols flopping Dawgs and Gators
Georgia and Tennessee meet Sept. 13 in Knoxville, the earliest the teams have met in a season since 1995 (Sept. 9) when Kirby Smart was a freshman defensive back for the Bulldogs. The Vols won 30-27 in the final seconds on a field goal. Smart never beat Tennessee as a player, but he has won eight straight in the series as a coach. Tennessee, meanwhile, doesn't face Florida until Nov. 22 at the Swamp, the latest those teams have played (not counting the 2020 COVID season) since 2001 (Dec. 1) when Tennessee won 34-32 in the Swamp in a game that was postponed because of the Sept. 11 attacks. Tennessee is a combined 12-38 against Georgia and Florida since 2000, 2-6 under Josh Heupel.Hogs debuting on the SEC road ... again
For the third straight season, Arkansas opens its SEC season on the road, the only school in the league having to play three straight openers away from home. The Hogs won 24-14 last season at Auburn and lost 34-31 at LSU in 2023. Arkansas opens SEC play this season at Ole Miss on Sept. 13. In fact, Arkansas plays its first two SEC games on the road, traveling to Tennessee on Oct. 11. Arkansas, Auburn and Vanderbilt are the only three SEC teams that have to play their first two league games on the road. All five of Arkansas' road opponents this season won at least nine games a year ago, and four (Memphis, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas) won 10 or more games.Border War returns
Kansas and Missouri will renew their series Sept. 6 in Columbia, the first time they've played since 2011. It's the first of a four-game agreement to bring back the series, which dates to 1891, and will be Kansas' first visit to Faurot Field since 2006, when Missouri won 42-17. Their 2011 meeting was at Arrowhead Stadium, with Missouri winning 24-10. The teams had met 93 years in a row before the series was not renewed following the 2011 game; at the time, it was the second-most-played rivalry in Division I-A football history.Catching up with old teammates
With full-scale free agency alive and well in college football, more and more players from the transfer portal are going up against their former schools and teammates. Some notable examples this season:ā¢ Ole Miss offensive guard Patrick Kutas vs. Arkansas on Sept. 13
ā¢ Oregon cornerback Theran Johnson at Northwestern on Sept. 13
ā¢ Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold at Oklahoma on Sept. 20
ā¢ Texas A&M receiver Mario Craver vs. Mississippi State on Oct. 4
ā¢ Missouri receiver Kevin Coleman Jr. vs. Mississippi State on Nov. 15
ā¢ LSU receiver Nic Anderson at Oklahoma on Nov. 29
