www.soonertimes.com

What does it mean in terms of quality of softball opponents? I honestly don't know but it seems like this year's conference games will probably be much more difficult than our last year in the Big 12. With the Big 12 expansion last year, it seemed like the quality of OU's opponents took a dip compared with 2022 and 2023.

First of all, '22 and '23 saw OU, UT, and OSU as the three conf powers and the rest were mostly also-rans. '24 ushered in 3 new teams, Houston, BYU, and UCF. Houston joined the rest of the also-rans, and BYU and UCF showed more of a fight and probably carved out a mid-tier group, if you will.
Next year in the SEC, every week will be like playing UT and OSU. There are just more of the better quality teams that we will be playing. We can't play all of them of course, but every conference game is now going to seem like a Super Regional, with maybe Auburn, S Car, and Ole Miss, and possibly Kentucky being the exceptions.

There will be a few of us I'm sure that will be taking a deeper dive into the SEC later on in the summer---or fall.

Just for a tease....A lot of the power teams lost a lot to graduation, like Tenn, Georgia, and LSU.
But other teams have built up very well....like Texas A&M and Florida. Missouri and Miss St also continue to build up their programs....and just because the big teams lost a lot to graduation doesn't mean they haven't reloaded also.

Top 4 to me right now appear to be Texas, OU, Florida, and aTm.....

We have all heard the ‘softball cartel” the last several years blather on and on about the SEC being the strongest conference. If you are talking about competitive depth, I think that has been true during our 4-peat run. Teams 1-13 are competitive and decent.

Certainly, all of the SEC have been more competitive than teams 4-7 or 4-10 in the Big 12. But teams 1-3 in the Big 12 have been far better than everyone in the SEC.

But during the last 4 years, I don’t think the SEC has had anyone (except 2024 UF) that was a real threat in the World Series. In 21-23, they significantly underperformed their seed and had multiple host teams that did not get out of their regional or Super. In 2024, they had teams that underperformed (Ark, UT and LSU) and teams that overperformed (primarily Alabama, tho at the expense of UT). Note that Florida, at a 4 seed, merely performed to their seeding - made the semis and lost.

Florida this year was obviously the 1 exception to that rule, as they made the semi-finals. They gave us all we wanted, but at the end of the day, they were reliant on one great pitcher that simply didn’t have enough arm left to finish.

The SEC champion probably isn’t going to win the SEC going 30-0 or 28-2, but something around 25-5 is going to win the SEC most years.

Favorites for 2025 probably start with Texas and Florida. We vault into that mix if we sign NiJa.

Only playing 24 conference games means a team can get lucky schedule wise and win the conference. Therefore, in the future I would put much less weight on conference titles and focus more on post season success.

People claim every weekend will be like a super regional, I don’t buy that at all. Maybe match ups against 5-6 teams feel that way versus the 2-3 teams in Big12.

I assume we won't know OU's actual softball schedule until later this fall.

Do we know there if there will be several divisions for softball or how the SEC will determine conference games?

I believe it has been announced that the SEC will now play 30 game seasons - 10 weekends of 3 games each. Best record takes the regular season. No divisions, no pods. I don’t know if there will be a tie-breaker or a dual champion in event of a tie.

TN Sooner wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2024 10:17 am I believe it has been announced that the SEC will now play 30 game seasons - 10 weekends of 3 games each. Best record takes the regular season. No divisions, no pods. I don’t know if there will be a tie-breaker or a dual champion in event of a tie.

30 games is for baseball. Softball is staying with 8 conference series, 4 home, 4 away each year. With 14 possible opponent, you miss out on 6 teams every year. I believe they will do a rotation every year so that in 4 years, every team would have played every other team home and away. I don't have any idea on how to they determine which team to rotate in and out each year, but the math works. Mike White has said Texas will play OU in the next two seasons but won't play OU in the two seasons after that. In summary, SEC softball schedule sucks because it doesn't keep key rivalries being played every year.

Hmmm - do you have a link? Because, I remember Patty talking about it and commenting “we have one less weekend to find games for, because the SEC schedule”. One less weekend of OOC equals one more weekend of conference schedule. Plank has also said this in the radio broadcast. Specifically - during the opening weekend for Love’s Field, he commented “next year, this will be a conference game weekend”.

It is possible I dreamed this - I seem to do that more and more - however, I have distinct recollection of this being discussed.

The SEC schedule will be 9 weekends (weekends of #5 thru #13) to play 8 series within the conference for 24 conference games. So Oklahoma will have 4 weekends of pre-SEC games during those weekends. Depending on when the bye week is, the Sooners will have one more week to schedule O-O-C games.

Last years 2024 Big 12 schedule was 9 weekend of play with no byes for 27 games. Weekends #5 thru #13.

The old Big 12 schedule prior to last year was 7 weekends to play 6 series for 18 games. The conference weekends were weekends #7 through #13. So there were six weekends of pre-conferences play. Then one more within the old Big 12 schedule.

As noted above, the SEC is one big 15-team conference in softball. (Vanderbilt does not have a softball team.) Each year each team plays 8 series against so you play 8 of the 15 teams each year. 4 on the road and 4 at home. To play the other 14 teams both home and road requires 28 weekends of play. 28 weekends divided by 8 teams equals 3.5 years to complete the full rotation. Essentially that means that every 87 years you will play each team in the SEC four times home and road.

Nothing has been said about a 'rivalry series included each season' that I know of. If there is a 'rivalry series each year, it gets much more complicated and less repetitive.

TN Sooner wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2024 1:56 pm Hmmm - do you have a link? Because, I remember Patty talking about it and commenting “we have one less weekend to find games for, because the SEC schedule”. One less weekend of OOC equals one more weekend of conference schedule. Plank has also said this in the radio broadcast. Specifically - during the opening weekend for Love’s Field, he commented “next year, this will be a conference game weekend”.

It is possible I dreamed this - I seem to do that more and more - however, I have distinct recollection of this being discussed.

Here is the announcement for the softball schedule format post realignment.

https://www.secsports.com/news/2022/06/ ... e-approved

OUBeliever56A wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2024 2:50 pm The SEC schedule will be 9 weekends (weekends of #5 thru #13) to play 8 series within the conference for 24 conference games. So Oklahoma will have 4 weekends of pre-SEC games during those weekends. Depending on when the bye week is, the Sooners will have one more week to schedule O-O-C games.

Last years 2024 Big 12 schedule was 9 weekend of play with no byes for 27 games. Weekends #5 thru #13.

The old Big 12 schedule prior to last year was 7 weekends to play 6 series for 18 games. The conference weekends were weekends #7 through #13. So there were six weekends of pre-conferences play. Then one more within the old Big 12 schedule.

As noted above, the SEC is one big 15-team conference in softball. (Vanderbilt does not have a softball team.) Each year each team plays 8 series against so you play 8 of the 15 teams each year. 4 on the road and 4 at home. To play the other 14 teams both home and road requires 28 weekends of play. 28 weekends divided by 8 teams equals 3.5 years to complete the full rotation. Essentially that means that every 87 years you will play each team in the SEC four times home and road.

Nothing has been said about a 'rivalry series included each season' that I know of. If there is a 'rivalry series each year, it gets much more complicated and less repetitive.

Based on what I have heard, there is no protected rivalry series that gets played every year. With the rotating format, you are correct that a team gets to play every other team home and away twice in 7 years. I have been a proponent of 2 permanent opponent plus 6 rotating opponent each year. That way, you play every other non-permanent team home and away twice every 8 years. In softball, the schedule imbalance created by having a strong permanent opponent is not enough to outweigh having the rivalries preserved IMO.

SEC has done a poor job of communicating some of those issues

Here is the announcement for the softball schedule format post realignment.

https://www.secsports.com/news/2022/06/ ... e-approved

That might be accurate but it is fairly old . It is dated June 03, 2022

Obviously I was wrong - thanks for setting my straight.

Lamest part of the SEC is the refusal to maximize conference games. 8 in football. 8 in softball. Just lame.

OU_Tom wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2024 8:09 pm SEC has done a poor job of communicating some of those issues

Here is the announcement for the softball schedule format post realignment.

https://www.secsports.com/news/2022/06/ ... e-approved

That might be accurate but it is fairly old . It is dated June 03, 2022

It is also confirmed by all the coaches during SEC media days done by Out of the Box podcast before last season. But those episodes (4 in total) are almost 3 hours each and I doubt people here are interested in spending a day going through them.