A proposal for SEC football realignment

Second, that’s going to affect whether you have three or four fan bases screaming bloody murder. South Carolina is not giving up its annual game with Georgia and Vanderbilt and Kentucky are going to fight anything that takes away their annual games with Tennessee. And LSU wouldn’t like it if they didn’t play A&M.

You have to go to at least three permanent rivalry games to make something like this work, and maybe even more. At that point, you might as well have divisions. I still have trouble figuring out why anyone has a problem with divisions.

Certainly, the three best SEC teams are all in the West this year. Maybe even the four best.

However, every West team gets their shot at every other West team. If they can’t make it, then I don’t see any compelling reason to give them another chance at it. Yes, rematches happen anyway (like last year), but it’s not very common.

Your system does protect some rivalries, but not more than the divisional system does. Florida loses it’s growing rivalry with LSU and does not regain the lost Auburn rivalry.

Vandy and Kentucky both lose UT, which would be a huge deal for them (particuarly Vandy, I think). If you give one of them to UT, then you lose UT-UF.

South Carolina loses Georgia. LSU loses Bama (not a traditional rivalry, but a growing one) and Auburn.

Even adding a third rivalry game won’t solve all these problems. The divisional system has (with A&M and Missouri joining) seven protected games for each school. Sure, some of them aren’t ideal, and important series have been lost in shuffle (AU-UF), but I think it works quite well. Right now the East is way, way down, but that won’t last forever. It probably won’t last until next year, in fact.

Hate to burst your bubble, but there is a rule regarding divisions and conference championship games …

17.9.5.1 Maximum Limitations—Institutional. [FBS/FCS] In bowl subdivision football, a member institution shall limit its total regular-season playing schedule with outside competition during the permissible football playing season in any one year to 12 contests … except as provided for all members under Bylaw 17.9.5.2

[ Rule 17.9.5.2 explains what exceptions are allowed in order to have more than 12 conference games per year ]

17.9.5.2 (part c) Twelve-Member Conference Championship Game. [FBS/FCS] A conference championship game between division champions of a member conference of 12 or more institutions that is divided into two divisions (of six or more institutions each), each of which conducts round-robin, regular-season competition among the members of that division

If you want to have a conference championship game, you MUST have divisions with round-robin play.

As a sidenote, your rivalry game idea is basically how the ACC conducts its basketball schedule now (two games with rivals every year, and either one or two games with everyone else on a rotating basis).

It’s not a bad idea for football, and the SEC could do it. But the SEC would have to scrap the championship game to do so.

But I prefer divisions. I freely admit that if I was an Alabama or Tennessee fan, I would probably not be happy about what’s likely going to happen if Mizzou comes in as #14, but I’m not, so I don’t care.

But I do agree that a floating schedule model would be better. There’s been some talk about it in the last few weeks.

I think you need to go to 9 games with 14 teams. You probably need 3 protected rivalries and then have all the other teams rotate on the schedule. You need to maintain an even number of rotating teams like we do now with 2 otherwise the math won’t work out.

I don’t think you can try to tweak the schedules from year to year based on record of the previous year. For one, no one is going to be happy if they have to travel down to the Swamp to play a game, but Florida doesn’t have to make a return trip the next year because there happens to be a more equal way of dividing out the strength of schedule. We need to maintain the home and home system.

We also need to maintain the system where we rotate teams in order to maintain conference unity. If you are basing the schedule on competitive balance only then you are bound to go several years before facing certain opponents. If that is what you’re going to do then you might as well preserve the current division model.

I also agree that you need to give a team it’s strongest rival, but if the other school has 3 more important rivalries than the first school then I think you should be out of luck there. There is no system where you can preserve all rivalries every single year unless you expand the schedule so much that you actually play a round robin schedule with every other team in the conference. That won’t happen so you just have to try to preserve as many as possible with the current 12 game format.

I’d do it like this:

Alabama: Tennessee, Auburn, Miss St

Arkansas: Missouri, LSU, Texas A&M

Auburn: Alabama, UGA, Florida

Florida: UGA, Auburn, South Carolina

Georgia: Florida, Auburn, South Carolina,

Kentucky: Tennessee, Missouri, Vanderbilt

LSU: Texas A&M, Arkansas, Ole Miss

Miss St: Ole Miss, South Carolina, Alabama

Missouri: Arkansas, Kentucky, Texas A&M

Ole Miss: Miss St, LSU, Vanderbilt

South Carolina: UGA, Miss St, Florida

Tennessee: Alabama, Vanderbilt, Kentucky

Texas A&M: Arkansas, Missouri, LSU

Vanderbilt: Tennessee, Kentucky, Ole Miss

they need to make sure every team plays every other team within some reasonable amount of time. If you go to 7 team divisions and keep a rivalry game and go to one rotating game, you would go a decade without playing some of the other teams. That seems stupid to me.

schedules need to be made more than one year in advance. For so many reasons.

Plus, without a set cyclical pattern, you could end up with long stretches where a pair of teams wouldn’t play. Also, the issue of which home field to play on becomes more difficult when series don’t come in two-year cycles.

doesn’t play every other team from the other division, yet a win or loss against that inter-division rival counts just as much in determining who gets to Atlanta.

How about this for a radical idea. Have a “regular season” that consists of only a full round-robin divisional conference schedule (so only 5 games as the league stands today), THEN schedule 3 games among the inter-divisional foes based on their standings in their division. For example, this year that would mean Bama & LSU get to take on SC & UGA instead of killing Vandy & UK, respectively, for easy conference wins. I obviously haven’t thought this all the way through, but it takes the concept of a floating type schedule based on a team strength one step further by having the schedule be determined mid season.

What’s all this chatter about LSU and UF wanting to drop each other? I’ve seen mentioned a number of places. I have no idea about LSU’s inner workings, but I’m fairly certain that Jeremy Foley etc see LSU as vital. Because the UGA game is in Jacksonville, LSU and UT are the only major SEC programs guaranteed to make an appearance in the Swamp every other year. That’s a big deal for recruiting (official visits).

No offense intended to South Carolina, of course, but that game doesn’t generate the hype and excitement that the Tigers and Vols do.

then you really only need eight conference games per year to play everyone every other year.

Each team has 13 conference opponents — 3 rivals and 10 others. If they play the three rivals every year and 5 of 10 remaining opponents each year (rotating back and forth) that’s only an eight game schedule.

On the other hand, that means each team has faced only 8 of 13 conference opponents (as opposed to 9 of 13).

If the SEC actually wanted to do this, they should get together with the ACC and the MAC and see if they want the same thing. Maybe the three of them could bring about a rule change.

Assuming a non-division schedule is created that is predetermined each year (not based on previous or current season records), which of these schedules is better?

A nine-game schedule in which each team:

• has three permanent rivals (play every year)
• has six conference non-rival games that rotate each year
• faces every non-rival three times every five years

or …

A nine-game schedule in which each team:

• has five permanent rivals (play every year)
• has four conference non-rival games that rotate each year
• faces every non-rival every other year

There are 14 teams, so it’s 14 points. I’m working on seeing if it works.

If I missed anything, please feel free to add to the pros/cons.

1. Put Mizzou in the East
Pros: pretty much keeps everything “as is” with everyone else (3 “traditional powers” in each division, no changes to rivalries, etc.); evens the scheduling out; balances current (or at least the last 5 years) team strengths
Cons: geographically out of whack; undue travel expenses to/from Columbia for other division rivals (UF & USCar in particular), especially for non-revenue sports

2. Send Auburn east
Pros: Geographically makes sense; balances historical team strengths; renews AU/UF rivalry; adds some (current/recent) strength to the East
Cons: splits up either Iron Bowl or UT/Bama (unless an exception is made); puts 4 of the 6 “traditional powers” in one division

3. Send Bama & Auburn east, shift Vandy west
Pros: Makes somewhat geographic sense (as these 3 are in the middle and realistically can go either direction); keeps all rivalries in tact (including UT/Vandy—if you want to call it a “rivalry”—as a cross-division game); allows some of the cross-divisionals that currently don’t make sense or aren’t anything special to be reshuffled
Cons: the only “traditional power” in the West would be LSU; the “strength” would now be in the East

4. Blow up the divisions and start from scratch
Pros: Start from scratch in drawing divisional lines, or just redrawing divisions, giving a clean slate to work with; would keep rivalries in tact somehow
Cons: may end up with nonsense divisional names and alignments (see ACC & B1G for examples)

Being a Mizzou & MSU alum, my preference is #3 for what it’s worth. The Mizzou part of me really doesn’t care where we end up, as long as we’re out of the Texas League. The only cross-divisional games that actually mean something right now are UT/Bama, UGA/AU, and (to a lesser extent) LSU/UF. The others aren’t very compelling most years. If it’s shaken up from this starting point, the cross-divisionals could go anywhere.