The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Saw an article a while back that detailed a scheduling solution for the mess that is the SEC schedule.  Coaches, players and fans alike have been grumbling about not playing other schools often enough, and about scheduling inequities too.  Right now UGA and A&M supposedly play in the same conference even though it will take like 13 years for the Dawgs to get to College Station.  That's dumb.  LSU just played at Vanderbilt for the first time in over a decade, and when UGA came to LSU last year that was a blue moon also.  

I think it's an interesting idea that fixes those problems as well as possible without going to a 9-conference game schedule, which the SEC seems determined to avoid, and keeps all the coveted rivalries intact.  

Basically every team gets 3 permanent opponents and the other 10 conference teams are split into 5 teams that you play on even years and 5 teams you play on odd years.  So if you get a 4 year degree from a university, you'll have been everywhere and played everyone the SEC has to offer.  

It would look something like this:








So UGA and AU get to play every year, UT and Bama play every year, which seems like the main things member schools would want to protect.  Probably not everybody would be happy--seems to be some discussion that Arkansas would like to keep LSU, UK would rather play UT every year than MSU, etc.  It seems at this point A&M would want to keep LSU (as listed in the picture) and they would probably get preference.  You'd have sacrifices obviously, such as if LSU and A&M are locked, then as an LSU fan I'd hate to lose Ole Miss, even if the game doesn't mean what it did in the 50's and 60's.  That leaves one spot, you can see Alabama is in it now, which is good, but it means the Florida game would have to go.  Personally I'd rather be able to play both of those schools every year, and frankly I'd kinda miss the Auburn game too, but something like this would definitely work for me.  I'd trade only getting to play UF/AU every other year if it meant playing UGA/UT/etc. 2 out of 4 years. 

There's probably small things that could be worked out--like if I were LSU I'd probably try to separate Florida and Georgia to separate years instead of the same year for sos purposes--but it's nothing that couldn't be ironed out, and to me the benefits would outweigh any losses.   

What do you think?

Meh.

I'm "OK" with whatever they do.  Truly.  Apathy is something I don't care about any more.

saw a similar idea of doing this, but with 5 locked opps, and going to 9 games, which gets all conf opp in a 4 year span, and saves all main rivals and gets back some old ones broken by divisions, like au/uf.

i might recreate it later.

who would be the 5 lsu would most want to play? i'd assume bama, au, ole miss, aTm and arky? or florida?

saw a similar idea of doing this, but with 5 locked opps, and going to 9 games, which gets all conf opp in a 4 year span, and saves all main rivals and gets back some old ones broken by divisions, like au/uf.

i might recreate it later.

who would be the 5 lsu would most want to play? i'd assume bama, au, ole miss, aTm and arky? or florida?

Guess I'd need to see that.  Why wouldn't it get a team all conference opponents in a 2 year span like in the OP?  13 teams to play, minus 5 permanent, gets you 8 teams left, so in a 9 game conf schedule just play 4 on even years and the other 4 on odd years.  Or did you mean it gets you to all SEC venues in a 4 year span?  

I guess it would be basically the same thing, just a matter of if schools want to play 9 conf games, which I doubt.  Beyond that I guess it's a matter of which model evens out the sos, though I'm thinking there may not be a difference.  It could be a matter of preference of how many permanent rivalries schools want to save vs. dealing with an extra conference game.  Either scenario would be preferable to me over what we have now.  

I'd take Florida over Arkansas.  Florida/LSU is not some kind of historic SEC rivalry, but it's a game I've gotten used to and has been entertaining more often than not.  If there were just three I'd take Ole Miss, A&M (though not conf, an often played ooc opp) and one of the Alabama schools.  Because of the craziness of the Auburn games I'd hate to lose that one, but again, that's not some SEC-storied thing.  Technically MSU and LSU have the most history with soon to be 110 games played, but I'd go with Alabama with over 80 games played.  Clanga really doesn't do much for me and I just wouldn't want to give up both Alabama schools.  

Florida's been getting screwed since the last expansion anyway.  No reason to stop now, I reckon.  

There wouldn't be any divisions in this model.  Just....you know....a bunch of teams purporting to be in the same conference playing each other.