What might a "floating" schedule look like with 5 protected rivalries?

by AllTideUp on Oct 20, 2025 12:07 PM EDT

[Ed: Bumped from FanPosts]

I'm not trying to steal Eggplant Wizard's thunder, but mdak06 gave me an idea for what I'm calling the "floating schedule." I'm not sure if that is an accurate or terribly descriptive term, but it was the first word to come to mind so I'm going with it.

I like the idea of scrapping the divisions and giving each team a set of protected rivalries while rotating a significant portion of the remaining schedule. The current NCAA rules require a divisional setup with a round robin schedule in order to determine what teams go to the conference championship game. Other rules have received waivers in the past though and so I'm hoping the SEC and any other 14 team conference will ask for a waiver in this area as well. That's probably wishful thinking, but you never know.

As has been covered, the whole idea of the "floating schedule" is to protect important rivalry games as well as ensure that your favorite team is playing all the other teams in the conference on a regular basis. The current divisional structure makes this incredibly difficult to do. The following setup is made assuming that Missouri is indeed the 14th team.

Just to reiterate a few important points:

This setup relies on adding a 9th conference game. With 14 teams in the conference it makes more sense to add at least 1 more conference game just to make things easier. All the other major conferences are heading towards 9 games as well and so it's going to be harder to schedule good OOC games in the future anyway.
The participants in the conference championship game would not be 2 division winners as there would no longer be divisions, but the 2 top teams in the conference after the full slate of games.
Each team will receive 5 protected "rivalry" games every year while the other 4 games will be rotated on a regular basis. When you add up the 5 teams you play every year, your own team, and 2 sets of 4 teams that will be rotated that comes to 14. You can either rotate all 4 of those unprotected games every 2 years or you could rotate 2 of them every year. It doesn't really matter either way because you will play all of the other 8 teams in the conference 2 times every 4 years. That's actually more frequent than we play cross divisional games right now. The current system provides that you play all the other unprotected teams 2 times every 5 years.
It's pretty much impossible to protect every "rivalry" game that every fan base deems important. There are too many fan bases that disagree with those other fan bases that see the first team as a heated rival. Couple that with the fact that there are some schools like Vandy and Miss St that hardly anyone really wants to play. They have to have 5 protected games as well so some compromise has to be made. The only way everyone could play everyone they wanted to play was if we had a 13 game round robin schedule across the entire conference and that's not going to happen anytime soon so we might as well not worry about it.
I put together a "floating schedule" with 3 protected rivalries in Eggplant Wizard's post and I think it worked out fine, but 5 protected rivalries should work even better because it will protect even more secondary rivalries. I use the word 'secondary' because I think it is important that each system at least give each school a protected game with the team they consider their most important rival. It's not really fair to throw someone like Vandy's scheduling concerns in the trash while trying to intentionally address the scheduling concerns of others. It's just not how you do business in a partnership.
Also, just to make it easier on me I'm basing this off the chart I created in Eggplant Wizard's post. There may be a better way to do it that would make more people happier, but I'm just trying to give you an idea of what it would look like. Feel free to point out a better alignment.

I think that covers all the points to keep in mind so without further adieu I give you the 5 protected rivalry "floating schedule."

Alabama plays: Auburn, Tennessee, Miss St, LSU, Texas A&M

Arkansas plays: LSU, Texas A&M, Missouri, Ole Miss, Florida

Auburn plays: Alabama, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Missouri

Florida plays: Georgia, Auburn, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas

Georgia plays: Florida, Auburn, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ole Miss

Kentucky plays: Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Missouri, South Carolina, Miss St

LSU plays: Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Arkansas, Alabama, Auburn

Miss St plays: Ole Miss, Alabama, South Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky

Missouri plays: Arkansas, Texas A&M, Kentucky, Miss St, Auburn

Ole Miss plays: Miss St, Arkansas, LSU, Vanderbilt, Georgia

South Carolina plays: Georgia, Florida, Miss St, Kentucky, Vanderbilt

Tennessee plays: Alabama, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Florida, Georgia

Texas A&M plays: LSU, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt plays: Tennessee, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, South Carolina

If someone could check my math on that and see if each team has 5 unique games.

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South Carolina would be happy, playing Kentucky, Vandy, and Miss St every year.

I don’t think Auburn would be feel the same way, however: Florida, Alabama, and LSU plus Georgia and Missouri.

by cantcatchuf on Oct 20, 2025 1:04 PM EDT reply actions

SCe does get off easy, but the big winner is Bama

For shiggles, I plugged Bill Connelly’s Current Five-Year F/+ Averages for all SEC teams (current and potential) into a spreadsheet, and averaged each team’s permanent rivals’ 5-yr F/+.

TEAM 5YR F/+ AVG PR 5YR F/+
Alabama 26.30% 8.20%
Arkansas 13.10% 12.64%
Auburn 12.00% 19.04%
Florida 23.60% 11.62%
Georgia 13.00% 11.72%
Kentucky 0.00% 5.80%
LSU 21.10% 11.74%
Miss St 3.10% 10.36%
Missouri 11.20% 6.50%
Ole Miss 3.00% 9.00%
South Carolina 11.30% 6.88%
Tennessee 8.70% 11.52%
Texas A&M 4.30% 13.28%
Vanderbilt -5.30% 5.46%

For reference, the average F/+ ranking for the SEC is 10.39%

Bama is significantly stronger than the rest of the SEC, according to F/+, but plays one of the weakest slates of permanent rivalries. Auburn does play the strongest slate of perm. rivals, but given the fact that I can’t see Auburn giving up Bama, UF or UGA, there’s only so much you can do.

Proposal: Give Bama Missouri instead instead of A&M, and instead of LSU playing Auburn have them play UF. UF-LSU game has picked up a lot of cachet in recent years, any way.

Of course then you’ve got to play around with more schedules, and that kind of cascade effect… I don’t have time for that.

by ChicagoVol on Oct 20, 2025 2:48 PM EDT up reply actions

I did sort of screw Auburn in that scenario, but I'm a Bama fan after all ;)

I don’t think Bama gets off easy with this setup. LSU has turned into a perennial power and A&M has more potential to be a perennial power than Mizzou would be. MSU is in there because I tried to give every team at least one school from the lower tier of teams. UT is down right now, but that probably won’t last long. The only way to have a perfectly equal strength of schedule across the board is to have the 13 game round robin schedule. Even our current system doesn’t provide a consistent and equal strength of schedule.

My feeling is that the overall strength of schedule for every team is going to be about the same or at least about what it is right now because there are so many rotating games. If you don’t have as many strong opponents in your protected rivalry list then you’ll still play the stronger teams in the other 4 games. You just don’t play all those same strong teams annually. It works the same way for schools that have more strong opponents in their protected list. They will get to play all the weaker teams in their rotating list.

by AllTideUp on Oct 20, 2025 5:10 PM EDT up reply actions

I'd like to see UF-LSU every year

I think you could switch Auburn off of LSU’’s schedule, replace it with Florida. Then replaced ARK with LSU on Florida’s schedule and had ARK and Auburn play. I only looked at it quickly but seems like that would work. Not too sure how that affects your rankings.

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by Moxie in MS on Oct 20, 2025 5:56 PM EDT up reply actions

As an Auburn fan I'm fine with the tougher schedule

but don’t you dare give us Arkansas as a protected opponent with no divisions. For the most part we don’t like that game now.

by aubievegas on Oct 21, 2025 11:57 AM EDT up reply actions

How would tie breakers work under this scenario?

I mean, say Carolina plays the schedule you propose and they win all 5 of their permanent games. Lets also say for the sake of argument that their rotating opponents are for a given season are Missouri, Tennessee, Ole Miss, and Auburn. Using this year (or every year) as an example, lets say Carolina loses to Auburn but wins the other three rotating games. That leaves them at 8-1. Since LSU and Bama are slated to play every year, and assuming that the winner of that game would go undefeated and the other would have one conference loss, how do you determine who gets to play the LSU/Bama winner in the title game? Would you have to institute a rule based on BCS rankings or would there be categorical rule that you couldn’t have a re-match of a regular season game between permanent opponents?

by tron1013 on Oct 20, 2025 1:21 PM EDT reply actions

It's a very good question and I'm not sure there is a good answer.

I think you could institute a no rematch rule and that would probably be fine as long as the loser of that potential rematch is the one being left out. I’m not sure you would limit that to teams that face each other annually though. If they face each other at all then I don’t really think the loser of that match has a right to demand a rematch unless maybe they defeated the team they are tied with head to head. In that regard it would work very much like the divisional tie breakers we have now where teams can rematch in the championship game as long as they were in different divisions. Team #2 in one division could have been better than team #1 in the other division, but they’ve already been beat out so it doesn’t matter.

The good thing about divisions is that at the least you know whoever wins the division performed the best that year among those teams. You do get some of the same problems in the current divisional system as you would in this one though. When USC won the East last year they got trounced in the championship game. The 4 best teams in the SEC were in the West last year and you could argue that MSU was as good as USC. So, it’s always a very real possibility that the 2 best teams aren’t playing in Atlanta no matter what system you use.

And BCS rankings might need to come into play as well in a 3 way tie. Technically, we use BCS rankings right now to break 3-way ties so it wouldn’t be that different. I’m not sure it is possible for 4 different teams to have 1 loss or fewer in this setup though.

There may not be a perfect way to prevent something like this from happening.

by AllTideUp on Oct 20, 2025 5:42 PM EDT up reply actions

and this is why

a ten-team conference works best.

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by TheMattROb on Oct 20, 2025 2:33 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs

As an Arkansas fan

I’d much rather Florida be on the ‘teams we never play’ list rather than the ‘teams we play every year’ list.

by starry on Oct 20, 2025 2:46 PM EDT reply actions

Personal Foul -- Arkansas

But why?!

BECAUSE YOU’RE ARKANSAS!

U MAD Hogs?

Oh, come on. Don't leave your uncle T-bag hangin'.

by Troll2Troll on Oct 20, 2025 7:07 PM EDT up reply actions

Just another thought on how I worked this out.

I tried to give every team at least 1 team from the lower tier of the conference. I think that worked out for everyone other than Auburn. I tried to give every team at least 3 strong opponents from the conference. I couldn’t really differentiate from perennial contenders and just good middle of the pack teams because I was mainly focused on preserving the most rivalries. That part didn’t work out in every case, but that wouldn’t be too different from the way we do it now. As it stands, each team has a cross divisional rivalry with another team that is traditionally of roughly equal strength.

That might be viewed as an advantage for a team like Ole Miss that plays Vandy every year and a disadvantage for LSU who plays Florida every year, but these teams are of roughly equal strength so it’s not really an advantage for either in the final standings. If Ole Miss becomes a power again then this concept may need to be reviewed. We have protected cross divisional games right now to protect important rivalries so I see it as pretty much the same thing.

by AllTideUp on Oct 20, 2025 5:52 PM EDT reply actions

Also....

I was a little arbitrary on how i decided some of these games. There is probably a better way to do it to make everyone happier, but I just wanted to see what it all might look like on paper.

by AllTideUp on Oct 20, 2025 5:53 PM EDT reply actions

I like this idea a lot but...

it still has one major problem that division play doesn’t. It leaves open the possibility that we could have more than one undefeated team at the end of the season. If we had three very strong teams that didnt play each other in the regular season we could have three unbeaten teams at the end of the season…with only two spots in the championship game

by AU Falcon on Oct 21, 2025 1:14 AM EDT reply actions

…having a qualifier that the BCS ranking is a tiebreaker is a good fix, of course the third team screams bloody murder.

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by AlabamaJammer on Oct 21, 2025 8:01 AM EDT up reply actions

I haven't run the numbers, but I'm not sure that is possible.

I know it’s not possible with the current setup and I’d be surprised if it is possible with this setup. With 9 games and a rotation of any other teams that have a shot at going undefeated included with the 5 protected games I’m just not sure the numbers would bear that out.

I could be wrong though. We need a mathematician in here.

by AllTideUp on Oct 21, 2025 6:02 PM EDT up reply actions

It is possible.

With 14 teams, it’s unlikely but it is technically possible.

Assuming you had 14 teams and a nine-game conference schedule, you’d first have to have three teams that are all excluded from each others’ groups of rivals. You’d also have to have the non-rival rotations set so that they all just happen to miss each other and keep their opponents confined to nine of the remaining 11 teams.

And then they’d all have to go undefeated in conference play.

Not likely, but it is possible.

Technically … it’s possible to have four undefeated teams. But the odds of that are ridiculously low.

I believe that if a conference moved from 14 to 16 teams and still had a rivalry system it would be substantially more likely to have three undefeated teams, since there would be many more possibilities for separate schedules.

Moving to 16 teams is a bad idea for various reasons. You essentially end up with two separate leagues that have a couple of games against each other but stick mostly to themselves. It becomes more like an AFC / NFC schedule where there are some games against the other group but a large majority of the games are against your own group.

14 teams with two 7-team divisions starts approaching that “two separate leagues” idea. 14 teams with rivalry schedules doesn’t.

Assumption is the mother of all @#%-ups.

by mdak06 on Oct 21, 2025 8:49 PM EDT up reply actions

I still say the only way to do 16 teams is with four pods

with a pod system, you can set it up such that no more than 2 teams go undefeated and such that you avoid the “two separate leagues” problem. I don’t think there’s another way to solve both at 16

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by Incipient_Senescence on Oct 22, 2025 12:12 AM EDT up reply actions

I think you are correct

Pods can theoretically work for football scheduling in a 16-team conference. It’s (as far as I know) the best option for 16 teams. The worst-case for rotating pods is that you play everyone at least once every three years (very difficult with fixed divisions & 16 teams).

The WAC tried pods in the mid-90’s and it was an utter failure, but I think it’s primarily because (1) the method of scheduling stunk, and (2) the geography stunk (way too much travel between different pods). The SEC and/or ACC wouldn’t have those problems if either one went to 16.

I’m leaning towards the idea that 14 is better than 16 … especially if there could be a rule change allowing the rivalry system + a conference championship.

Assumption is the mother of all @#%-ups.

by mdak06 on Oct 22, 2025 10:13 AM EDT up reply actions

I think a pod system is very workable

The trick is to rotate the pod pairings like you rotate cross divisional games. You have to make sure that each pod is pretty competitively balanced, but basically it’s like you realign divisions every 2 years.

You are right about the WAC. They set up a pod system, but they never rotated the alignment. They essentially had 2 8-team divisions at the end of the day and just called them “pods” or whatever term they may have used for it. There were too many traditional rivalries lost…we should learn from that lesson. They were also essentially merging 2 small conferences….the old WAC along with a lot of programs from the old Big West that had made the move to D1. We won’t have that problem.

The biggest weakness of the WAC though is that there was no big money involved. They set up their alignment to try to build a stronger conference, but there was no motivation to keep things together if it didn’t work. At least in the case of the SEC, one would have to make a financial sacrifice to break it all up.

by AllTideUp on Oct 22, 2025 10:42 AM EDT up reply actions

There's no perfect way to prevent a scenario requiring tiebreakers

But … it’s still probably way to give each team its preferred set of opponents.

A “rivalry schedule” is basically way to create a “personalized division” for each team. It makes a lot of sense in that regard. I’m an ACC fan and am used to seeing a form of it with ACC basketball.

I’m seriously starting to wonder if this is something that the ACC and SEC should get together on to push for an NCAA rule change. As it stands now, it can’t happen (unless you drop the championship game), and I don’t see any reason for the NCAA to issue a waiver on the rule.

@AU Falcon -- with each team playing 9 out of 13 opponents, I’d think the possibility of three undefeated teams is possible but unlikely. Two is a more likely possibility (in which case the championship game is all the more awesome).

These are options I see as possible tiebreakers (in no particular order):

head to head record(s) (should always be the first tiebreaker if available)
record in common games … in a two-way tie, they’ll have at least six games in common (in a 14-team league with 9 conference games); in a 3-way tie, this is not a great option
BCS standings
ratio of points scored to points allowed (conference games); the object of the game is to score points and stop your opponents from scoring - those who do both of these well are generally the better teams (both on offense and defense)

Tiebreakers would definitely be needed, but overall the conference is more likely to get the two best teams in the championship game.

@AllTideUp - nice post - glad you enjoyed my comment from before. :-)

Assumption is the mother of all @#%-ups.

by mdak06 on Oct 21, 2025 3:14 PM EDT reply actions