The big day is here.

Hold the red carpet but at 6 p.m. CT Wednesday, an hour-long program on the SEC Network is blocked off to announce the long-awaited 2024 SEC football schedule. The addition of Texas and Oklahoma threw the whole 2014 plan into the blender, led to Internal indecision and eventually this one-year stopgap solution.

So, what can we expect when the wrapper comes off the super secretive schedule?

First, the Iron Bowl isn’t going anywhere. Even the most extreme SEC scheduling model isn’t taking Alabama and Auburn out of each other’s business on an annual basis.

But the eight-game scheduling format the 16-team league’s presidents voted to adopt June 1 at the SEC spring meetings left a few details vague.

Commissioner Greg Sankey that day noted, “fans will continue to enjoy traditional rivalries and begin to see new matchups presented by the addition of two historically successful football programs to the SEC.”

The definition of “traditional” comes into play here as Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia are as elemental as they get. But in terms of scheduling, both would fall into a tier below the Iron Bowl.

Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellinger, who has been in front of the scheduling saga from the beginning, noted June 1 that preserving both “primary and secondary” rivalries are factors in the scheduling formula.

Certainly, that would include the resumption of Texas-Texas A&M, right?

Could that also include Alabama-LSU?

That’s been quite a series for the past decade-plus and the inclusion of the Tigers x2 plus Tennessee gives the Crimson Tide the three opponents that Nick Saban originally opposed being part of the Alabama annual schedule under a proposed nine-game format.

Also worth considering is that 2014 composite schedule that was supposed to map out the next 12 years of conference games after Missouri and Texas A&M joined the league. Under that plan, Alabama would play host to South Carolina in 2024 and Florida would travel to Auburn.

That previous plan included the East and West divisions that’ll go the way of lawn darts after next fall.

How Texas and Oklahoma integrate into the plan will also be notable. Scheduling those blue bloods with the incumbent powers of the traditional SEC seems logical. With Texas completing a previously scheduled home-and-home at Alabama in 2023, the novelty may be there the following fall so a crimson-on-crimson meeting with the Sooners would be logical.

Alabama and Oklahoma have only played two regular season games with a home-and-home in 2002 and 2003 so there’s an immediate “marquee attraction” game.

For Auburn, it last faced Texas in 1991 while its only two previous meetings with Oklahoma came in the 1972 and 2017 Sugar Bowls.

Either way, it’s hard to imagine Alabama and Auburn won’t get a crack at one of the newcomers in Year 1.

Fairness and equity were also components of the scheduling puzzle that the SEC was trying to solve. That means different things to different teams, and nobody will come to a unanimous agreement.

Finding a schedule that was both challenging enough to impress the playoff committee while not building too many intra-conference losses to scare them away is part of the calculation. The 12-team playoff also begins in 2024 and the unknowns of how the committee would judge two- and three-loss teams in the process was enough to make skeptics of coaches like Auburn’s Hugh Freeze when a ninth SEC game was an option in Destin.

The league kept the number at eight for now in what Sankey described as a one-year plan that still requires teams to schedule a Power 5 opponent for 2024.

For Auburn, that 2024 team is California while Alabama travels to Wisconsin.

Anyway, that’s a decent amount of informed speculation for now. All will be revealed tonight on cable TV in the everlasting dream to create a circular SEC programming calendar.

Sankey played coy when asked for specifics about the schedule when the format and primetime special were announced two weeks ago.

So, SEC Network at 6 it will be.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.