SEC Athletic Directors Vote to Get Rid of ‘Cupcake Week’

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told reporters on Tuesday evening at the SEC spring meetings that the conference's athletic directors have voted to play a conference game on the next-to-last weekend of the college football season, starting in the 2027 season.

The week is commonly known as "cupcake week" in the SEC, where teams got a brief reprieve from their SEC schedules before taking on their rivals during the final week of the regular season. Now, teams may have to face an in-conference foe that week, with Sankey joking, "That's the end of cupcake week," during his media availability on Tuesday night.

It largely became a "joke" of a week, with very few marquee games. If your significant other was upset with how much time you spent on a couch on Saturdays and Sundays during the fall, cupcake week was when you could make it up to them by participating in apple-picking weekends, preparing for the rush of Thanksgiving festivities the next week, or getting some much-needed yard work done that you had been neglecting since September.

Alabama has played UT-Chattanooga (a 66-10 win) in 2023 and Eastern Illinois (a 56-0 victory) in 2025, the last two times the Crimson Tide participated in cupcake week. In 2026, Alabama will rematch with the UT-Chattanooga Mocs in the final cupcake week in the SEC. The last two times Alabama played SEC opponents in the next-to-last week of the regular season, Bryce Young led Alabama to a 42-35 shootout victory over Arkansas in 2021, and Oklahoma ran roughshod over the Crimson Tide 24-3 in 2024.

Wyatt Fulton is the Tide 100.9 DME and Brand Manager, primarily covering Alabama Crimson Tide football and men's basketball. For more Crimson Tide coverage, follow Wyatt on X (Formerly known as Twitter) at @FultonW_.