Joining the Southeastern Conference would be heaven, right? Well, it’s kind of a scheduling hell for Vic Schaefer.

Nothing gets the Texas women’s basketball coach more worked up than asking him about playing on Thursdays and Sundays in the SEC as opposed to the Wednesday-Saturday format in the old Big 12.

Playing on Sunday? Only in the SEC, a conference the spiritual Schaefer occasionally refers to as the “Heathen League” for choosing to play on the sabbath.

No. 5 Texas opened league play last Thursday with an 80-73 road win at No. 9 Oklahoma. That was followed by a 90-56 Sunday afternoon win over Arkansas. Next comes another Thursday-Sunday two-step with No. 18 Alabama and then on the road at No. 2 South Carolina.

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“This all started back in the day when our window for TV was only one day a week, and that was on a Sunday,” Schaefer said via Zoom on a Tuesday. “The commissioner, two commissioners ago, said, ‘Hey, if you want to paly on TV, you gotta play on Sunday.’ We’re in the Bible Belt. Most of the SEC is in the Bible Belt. And you're asking these kids to play on Sundays. You're asking coaches to work on Sunday mornings.

“It fits the world, right? The world is it's that way, and I hate it, so I I just think it sends a horrible, horrible message,” he added. “I have a lot of kids that grew up in the church, and whether they would go or not, one thing's for sure, they're not going in this format. And so I'm dead against it. I've been raising hell about it for years.”

Now, Schaefer is not some Bible-thumping fanatical. He’s progressive on many issues, and one of the most supportive coaches of female athletes and women’s sports you’ll come across. But this is one that sticks in his craw.

To Schaefer, it made sense to play on Sundays when the old Tennessee and Georgia teams were vying for national attention. The women’s game has progressed to the point where it no longer must cater to whenever the TV networks decide to stick ’em, at least in Schaefer’s view.

The SEC’s television contact with ESPN is for all sports and runs through the 2033-34 athletic year.

Do enough coaches feel the same way Schaefer does? “I've seen the room change a little bit,” he said.

In the Wednesday-Saturday format, Schaefer said players could have Sunday off — “a true day off” with no school or practice.

“Their great day off is Monday when they have a physics exam or they have to go to class or they have a biology test,” Schaefer said. “That’s not a true day off, getting up and going to an eight o’clock class like my kids do. That’s not a true day off.”

The league is also talking about going to an 18-game conference schedule in the future, two more than the current 16-game slate. Currently, the SEC men’s teams play an 18-game schedule.

“By the time you get to March, your kids are fried. Coaches are fried,” Schaefer said. “We’re the only sport we get no spring break, no Christmas, no Thanksgiving. I know there’s sports that go both semesters, but a lot of those sports get one, two or all three of those, we get none of them. And so it’s a really tough, tough grind for our kids and my staff, and so get off my soapbox.

“You probably knew I'd get on it when you asked the question.”