One of the hot topics at SEC spring meetings this week in Miramar Beach Fl.: Whether or not the league will adopt a nine-game conference football schedule. The idea has been discussed for years, since it became official that Texas and Oklahoma were joining, but the decision-makers have a new data point for 2025.

After Alabama, along with South Carolina and Ole Miss, was left out of the 2024 College Football Playoff, coaches and athletics directors around the league began questioning whether playing difficult schedules would be rewarded. On Tuesday, speaking to reporters at spring meetings, Kalen DeBoer was asked whether the snub changed whether he would support a nine-game conference slate, given that it might not be rewarded by the selection committee.

“I’m open to whatever,” DeBoer said. “Open to hearing the conversation. There’s certainly thoughts you have, but I can’t say that they’re concrete in my mind. Yeah, you kind of wonder what would have happened if other people would have had the chance to play our schedule last year, and that would only get tougher, I know, if you played a full SEC nine-game schedule.”

Alabama lost to Tennessee, which made the CFP last season, but also dropped matchups against Vanderbilt and Oklahoma where it was heavily favored. The Crimson Tide finished one spot out of the field, behind SMU, which had only lost one game before dropping the ACC championship game to Clemson.

UA athletics director Greg Byrne said on social media after the Tide was left out, that it could change how it schedules non-conference games going forward. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said Monday that the league’s snubs were altering how teams were viewing their upcoming schedules.

“It’s clear that not losing becomes, in many ways, more important than beating the University of Georgia, which two of our teams that were left out did,” Sankey said. “Nobody had that kind of quality win.”

Even with the talk from above him, DeBoer pointed out how packed the Crimson Tide’s 2025 schedule remains.

“From our end, going into this season, we’re playing 10 Power 4 games, with Florida State and Wisconsin this year, on top of the eight games,” DeBoer said. “So I know we haven’t held back at this point, when it comes to playing a tough schedule, non-conference-wise. So you would certainly have to look at those things as it applies, if you played nine regular season games that were in the SEC.”

SEC spring meetings will continue through Thursday in Destin. For the time being, DeBoer said he was just going with the flow.

“I’m just going to play the games that we can schedule, and adjust accordingly as we change the SEC games, if that’s the case,” DeBoer said.