Mississippi State Football: 2025 SEC Opponents Announced

Mississippi State football just began spring practices for the 2024 season, but major news about the 2025 season has been announced.

Wednesday the SEC announced the conference's scheduling format and matchups for the 2025 season. And it's going to look very similar to 2024.

Last year, the SEC underwent a major debate about the league's future scheduling model with the additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the conference. The widespread assumption was that with a 16-team league, divisions would be scrapped, and the SEC would adopt a 9-game conference schedule.

Divisions were, in fact, scrapped, but rather than add an extra SEC game, the league voted to stick with an 8-game conference schedule for 2024. Each team's schedule was built out with the intention of preserving the biggest rivalries and properly integrating Texas and Oklahoma into the conference. This was deemed a temporary measure with a new vote coming this year to choose a long-term solution for 2025 and beyond.

Again, most assumed 9-conference games would be voted into action, but that will still not be the case. For the 2025 football season, the SEC will stay with an 8-game conference schedule. And rather than change up opponents for new matchups, they're keeping things simple: in 2025 each team will play the same conference slate as 2024 but with the home and away games swapped.

Mississippi State football's 2025 SEC opponents

In 2025, Mississippi State football will play Ole Miss, Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee in Starkville. They will play Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, and Texas A&M on the road. That, obviously, is the opposite of this season.

It's unquestionably a brutal schedule, as is this season's, but also like this season, it's possible the home/away split benefits the Bulldogs. In 2024, State faces a gauntlet of a road schedule and has it's more winnable games at home. That should be a good thing for MSU because it means they won't waste home games on teams they're unlikely to beat and will get home field advantage for the toss-ups on the schedule. With a rebuild in place and bowl-eligibility being the goal, that's ideal.

For 2025, that switch may be beneficial. There's reason to believe that Jeff Lebby's 2025 team should be a good bit improved, which means having their more high profile games at home, such as Ole Miss and Tennessee, could be the edge they need to win them. And facing teams like Arkansas and Florida on the road is unlikely to be overly difficult.

For both 2024 and 2025, Mississippi State football's schedule might maximize a potential win total.

New kickoff times for 2024 season

Another bit of news regarding the SEC football is that we'll see later kickoff times for select games. John Talty and Alex Scarborough of 247 Sports reported on Wednesday that starting in 2024, games broadcasted on the SEC Network will kick off 45 minutes later than in previous years.

For example, an 11:00 am CT kick would now start at 11:45. This is only for SEC Network games, as ABC and ESPN will stay with their normal Saturday slate. But it will create staggered start times, making it more possible to watch more games. Not to mention that SEC teams will have a slightly less likely chance at playing a dreaded morning game.

While opinions on an 8 or 9-game SEC schedule vary, this is undoubtedly, a positive change for SEC football.