LSU's new SEC scheduling format sets Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Arkansas as annual foes, and a push for Texas in 2026

On Tuesday at 6 p.m., ESPN2 and the SEC Network will formally unveil the conference's new scheduling format. By most accounts, LSU already knows its answer: Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Arkansas will be its three permanent opponents. An Advocate columnist, writing Monday, called the trio predictable, sensible and a little meh. Nothing is official until the broadcast, but the reports from multiple outlets are firm enough that he says to bank on them.

Under the format, those three games are the fixed part of the schedule. LSU will meet the other 12 SEC teams on a rotating basis, facing every team within two years and playing everyone both home and away within four years.

The Ole Miss pairing arrives at a pointed moment. The Tigers and Rebels play this Saturday at 2:30 p.m. on ABC, both 4-0, with LSU ranked No. 4 in the AP poll and Ole Miss No. 13. It is the first time the two have met both unbeaten and untied since the 1959 Halloween night game in Tiger Stadium, when No. 1 LSU (7-0) beat No. 3 Ole Miss (6-0), 7-3. The teams have played every year since the end of World War II in 1945, more than 100 meetings in all, which the columnist says made this an annual border skirmish worth preserving.

Texas A&M makes geographic sense to him. The schools have played on and off since 1899, had a big series in the 1980s and 90s, and have met every year since the Aggies joined the SEC in 2012. Fan bases mix closely all the way from Slidell to College Station. Still, the series does little for him personally. He would have found it more intriguing for LSU to keep playing Alabama or Florida, or to renew the annual series with Auburn, though he says several reasons kept that from happening.

Arkansas is the meh part, and he argues it nearly had to happen for logistical reasons. LSU needs an opponent for Thanksgiving weekend to close the regular season. Oklahoma filled that slot this year and in 2024, but the trip between Baton Rouge and Norman is long, and Oklahoma and Missouri will likely play annually in a border matchup with old Big 12 ties. Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri are the only SEC teams besides LSU without a major rival to end the season; Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are not playing again anytime soon. LSU and Arkansas are border rivals who play for The Boot and have met 80 times since 1901. The columnist calls it a win for Arkansas, which was unhappy when LSU ended the regular season against Texas A&M from 2014 to 2023, and says LSU expects to win the game nine times out of 10.

He explains the omissions this way. Alabama was going to get Auburn, and its Tennessee game is also huge, so the SEC was not going to hand the Crimson Tide a third potential heavyweight in LSU. Florida was left out because the league sought to preserve rivalries and weigh geography, producing many annual games among old SEC West schools and among old SEC East schools. Auburn already has Alabama and the South's oldest rivalry, with Georgia, so it received Vanderbilt, which he calls no easy out at the moment. His overall verdict is that the SEC divided the annual opponents fairly equitably.

The immediate question is the 2026 schedule. LSU will draw some of the league's heavyweight class: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. How that shakes out is unknown, but the columnist says the SEC should do right by LSU and send Texas to Baton Rouge. The Longhorns never returned LSU's 2019 win in Austin in 2020, as planned, because the SEC played a conference-only pandemic schedule, so he says the Tigers are owed a game. Texas has not played in Tiger Stadium since 1953 and has met LSU just three times since 1962. He adds that Arch Manning, the current banner carrier of the New Orleans football family, quarterbacking Texas in Baton Rouge would be appointment viewing.

Watch Tuesday's reveal for confirmation of the three annual opponents, and then for which of the seven heavyweights come to Tiger Stadium in 2026.