If the proliferation of the transfer portal and NIL was not enough, college football is about to change again.

The upcoming 2023 season will be the end of the road for several aspects of the sport, particularly in the SEC, that fans have come to expect.

Here is what to savor one last time this fall before 2024 begins a new era of college football:

THE FINAL SEASON OF… THE SEC WEST: The SEC created divisions in 1992 when it added South Carolina and Arkansas to the conference, with the winners of each division playing in a newly-created conference championship game. Since then, Alabama has won the division 14 times, double LSU’s seven times as the most for any SEC West team.

When the SEC decides upon its new scheduling format this spring to accommodate Texas and Oklahoma joining the conference in 2024, the SEC is very likely to eliminate divisions. That has been the consistent message from commissioner Greg Sankey since last year, and Sankey has also shot down the idea of using four-team “pods” or mini-divisions of four teams each that were once floated.

“I would put pods in your Tide box in your laundry room and leave them there,” Sankey said on Next Round Live last week.

Instead, the SEC is likely to adopt a division-less format similar to basketball where teams are simply ranked 1 through 16 based on winning percentage, with the top two teams advancing to the SEC championship game. The Pac-12 and ACC have also moved to eliminate divisions, and the Big Ten could follow. That was allowed by an NCAA rule change last year, and reduces the chance that a team with a weaker playoff résumé could win its division and a conference title.

For the SEC, that means fans can wave goodbye to the SEC West and SEC East after this upcoming season, and do not have to waste their time trying to re-draw division maps with Oklahoma and Texas.

THE FINAL SEASON OF… AN 8-GAME CONFERENCE SCHEDULE: The SEC discussed two scheduling models at its spring meetings in Florida last year, one being an 8-game schedule with one permanent opponent per team, and another being a 9-game schedule with three permanent opponents. The momentum in the months since has favored the 9-game schedule, which could be finalized this spring in advance of Texas and Oklahoma joining the conference next year.

Nick Saban has long advocated for playing nine or even 10 conference games, and he is likely to get his wish. Coaches of less-successful SEC programs have voiced concerns about playing too many conference games and jeopardizing their chances of winning six games to become bowl eligible, but Saban has argued fans would rather see another conference game than watch Alabama blow out Western Kentucky, for example.

Assuming the SEC moves forward with a nine-game schedule, Alabama’s non-conference schedule would shrink to three games beginning in 2024. The Tide has four known non-conference opponents in 2024 (Western Kentucky, South Florida, Wisconsin and Mercer) and 2025 (Florida State, Louisiana-Monroe, Wisconsin and Eastern Illinois), so those schedules would need to be tweaked.

THE FINAL SEASON OF… ALABAMA’S ANNUAL GAMES AGAINST SOME CONFERENCE OPPONENTS: The SEC’s expected new 9-game scheduling format would feature three permanent opponents and six rotating opponents. That means each school would play every other SEC school at least once every two years, and visit each opposing stadium at least once every four years.

Two of Alabama’s permanent opponents would be obvious: Auburn and Tennessee. The third is less certain, with some projecting Mississippi State because of proximity and others predicting LSU because the juice that rivalry with Alabama has brought to the SEC over the past decade.

What will go away after 2023 will be Alabama’s annual games against at least four of its current SEC West opponents. Schools like Arkansas, Texas A&M and Ole Miss would no longer appear on Alabama’s schedule each season, and would become part of the biannual rotation with other schools such as South Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri and Vanderbilt. That means Alabama would travel to Lexington or Gainesville as often as it would College Station or Fayetteville.

THE FINAL SEASON OF… THE FOUR-TEAM COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF: The College Football Playoff moving to a 12-team system in 2024 is the biggest change to college football coming after 2023, which will be the final season of the four-team playoff.

That means this upcoming season is the last time the four-team system, adopted in 2014, is used. Alabama made the first five College Football Playoff fields but has missed it two of the past four seasons.

The CFP selection committee will still rank teams 1 through 25 in 2024, but the top 12 teams in the rankings will not necessarily be the seeds for the 12-team playoff. Instead, the top four seeds will go to the top four-ranked conference champions, and the next two highest-rated conference champions must also be included in the 12-team field.

THE FINAL SEASON OF… TWO LOSSES DOOMING A SEASON’S NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP HOPES: Alabama’s playoff hopes were effectively extinguished last season when it lost its second game of the season to LSU. Even several dominoes falling the Tide’s way in the final weeks could not push Alabama into the four-team field, and no two-loss team has ever made the four-team playoff.

Two losses will no longer doom any team’s chances in the 12-team system. The automatic bids for the top six conference champions mean winning a conference title will still get you into the playoff, and the six at-large seeds will probably include two or even three-loss teams each year.

The hope from college football’s leaders is the new system maintains a wider scope of interest in many teams into November, instead of the current system that tosses teams onto the scrap heap if they lose two games.

THE FINAL SEASON OF… THE BRYANT-DENNY SCHEDULE BEING OVER BY NOVEMBER: We knew Alabama’s Iron Bowl game last November was the final game in Bryant-Denny Stadium for the 2022 season, and we know Alabama’s Nov. 18 game against Chattanooga this fall will be the final game in Tuscaloosa for the 2023 season.

But beginning with the 2024 season, there will always be the possibility of playing an extra home game in Bryant-Denny Stadium each December.

That will be part of the CFP’s 12-team playoff, where the teams seeded 5 through 12 will play first-round games on campuses the third weekend in December. That means if Alabama earns a No. 5 through No. 8 seed in the 12-team playoff, it would host another playoff team in Tuscaloosa for the right to advance and play one of the top four-seeded teams.

This past season, that would have meant Alabama making the 12-team field and hosting USC.

In future years, it could also mean Alabama earning a No. 9 through No. 12 seed and traveling somewhere else in the country to play a first-round playoff game in December.

THE FINAL SEASON OF… HAVING ONLY ONE IRON BOWL EVERY YEAR: Alabama has played Auburn once every season since 1948, but under the 12-team playoff system beginning in 2024, a second Iron Bowl could happen in any given December.

It would take Alabama and Auburn to both make the 12-team playoff, then for one of those schools to host the other in a first-round playoff game. Or, they could meet in a later round of the 12-team playoff, which will include quarterfinal, semifinal and the national championship game at bowl-game sites.

The current system with Alabama and Auburn playing in the SEC West, and only one advancing to the conference title game, has made a re-match in a four-team playoff highly unlikely. But those chances will increase in a division-less format and 12-team playoff.

Same for any other SEC opponent: Alabama could play the same team twice in any given season, something Saban has noted was not uncommon during his time in the NFL.

THE FINAL SEASON OF… THE SEC ON CBS: Alabama fans have gotten used to watching their team play in Saturday 2:30 p.m. CT time slot on CBS for the past two decades, but 2023 will mark the end of that. The SEC’s television deal with CBS expires after this season, and the SEC’s new deal with ABC/ESPN will begin in 2024. That means instead of the CBS theme song, Alabama fans will hear the ESPN theme music when Saturday afternoon SEC games on ABC begin in 2024.

CBS begins its television deal with the Big Ten this fall and will expand to exclusively airing Big Ten games in 2024 when it drops the SEC. Instead of hearing the CBS theme music for an Alabama vs. Tennessee game, get ready to hear it for a USC vs. Michigan game, for instance. USC and UCLA will join the Big Ten beginning in 2024.

THE FINAL SEASON OF… LEARNING KICKOFF TIMES TWO WEEKS IN ADVANCE: Because of the SEC’s current dual television contracts between CBS and ESPN, the conference has delayed announcing kickoff times until less than two weeks before games. That has complicated travel plans for fans, but beginning in 2024, the conference will be able to announce kickoff times over the summer. That is because all of its games will air on ESPN networks, and games can be shifted between networks instead of moving times.

Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.