I know it seems like the pods suck but remember there will still be lots and lots of games versus the rest of the conference.
I’m all for the pods as long as they are set up so that you play so many different teams in a 4 year period.
Imagine playing Bama, Texas, Ou, UF, UGa, Auburn, A&M often. I think the way I saw it is you play the entire conference every 4 years home and away. IMO this is the only way to do it. Better yet have a playoff between pods for the CCG that way nobody can duck a great team due to a schedule quirk.
That pod in particular really would suck for us. Like I said before, it's not playing UT, OU, and even the other refugees that I mind. That's actually kinda neat. But I'd gladly forego those games to be in a pod with some of our more long-standing partners. That probably includes A&M. While I didn't watch football as that came to a close, I'm plenty old enough to remember that it was a thing in my childhood. To me it's still new, but it does have an old feel, probably because I know a ton of old LSU fans who get worked up about A&M the same way they do about Ole Miss or Alabama.
OU/UT/LSU/ARK or Mizzou.....that would ensure that every year is the games I just don't care about, and I'm waiting half the time to see teams I do care about.
Don't let Cincy fool you, LSU/Ole Miss is a thing, they just don't have the clout to make anybody else care or recognize it. The Alabama schools probably come next for us. Most Alabama/Auburns fans I know feel the same way. LSU belongs in a tier below Tennessee/Auburn and Georgia/Alabama respectively, but we're generally next on the list. It's not only a recent thing either. I know any pod or division is almost certainly going to split us up, and I hate it, but there's nothing I can do about it. At the very least I'd like to see us in a pod with Ole Miss and A&M. That's not exactly asking a lot, except for the fact everyone else has to make adjustments to accommodate it, and that's not something I'd count on. Ole Miss would want to keep MSU, and it just dominoes from there.
The only excitement I could muster for UT to take the place of one of our current annuals is that I used to live there and have a lot of UT friends (and married a Hook'em....does that make her a hooker?). The paradigm of the thing itself....we've played them maybe 13 times, only two of which I can remember. OU? Even less. They beat us a in a bowl decades ago and then we edged them out in the Sugar/NC in a defensive slugfest, but even that was almost 20 years ago. Arkansas or Missouri......meh.
There won't be a perfect solution. I resign myself to trying to be happy if we get to play either A&M or Ole Miss annually.