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

the cotton holdings lone star showdown? what corp putz contrived that abomination?

This corporate putz:

https://cottonholdings.com/lone-star-showdown

I really have no idea how that branding helps Texas, Texas A&M, or Cotton Holdings, but I'm sure they paid both schools a ton of money for the privilege.

"Cotton Holdings provides infrastructure support services, focusing on commercial restoration and recovery after disasters, but also offers construction, roofing, consulting, workforce staffing, temporary housing, and culinary services to public and private entities globally. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, the company has a diversified structure with various subsidiaries operating under different brands to deliver turnkey solutions for damage recovery and large development projects worldwide.  "

Lane Kiffin has expressed his unhappiness with the annual rivals, particularly the fact that Ole Miss gets Oklahoma as one of them.

Brent Venables doesn’t care about SEC scheduling, but Lane Kiffin does
Sep 30, 2025 Updated 1 hr ago
Berry Tramel
Tulsa World Sports Columnist

Brent Venables doesn’t care who the Southeastern Conference makes his Sooners play. And that’s OK.

Lane Kiffin does care who the SEC makes his Rebels play. And you know what? That’s OK, too.

OU and Ole Miss have been paired as annual rivals in the SEC’s new nine-game format, at least for the next four seasons, and Mississippi’s Kiffin was less than thrilled.

“Oklahoma is really disappointing,” Kiffin said on the SEC teleconference last week. “We don’t have anything in common with them, or our fans. So that doesn’t make any sense at all.

“And so that’s unfortunate with so many great teams that we’ve played for a long time here, especially from our SEC West (division) years. So that’s unfortunate, but it is what it is.”

Kiffin, of course, has fallen victim to tunnel vision. The SEC schedule is not an Ole Miss world. It’s a big jigsaw puzzle, and all kinds of pieces must fit together.

Venables is one of those coaches who doesn’t get caught up in politics — he’s too busy thinking of how to stop 3rd-and-3 — and can’t get caught up in who he’s asked to play.

So Venables was unmoved when the Sooners were given Texas (expected), Missouri (expected) and Ole Miss (unexpected) as OU’s annual foes.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Venables said. “Whatever schedule they give us, I’m happy. I say that respectfully. Honestly.”

A lot of Oklahomans were hoping for Arkansas; it’s only 235 miles from campus to campus, yet the Sooners and Razorbacks haven’t played in the regular season since the 1920s. SEC schedule-makers could legitimately ask if OU and Arkansas are natural rivals, why haven’t they done something about it in 100 years?

Others were hoping for Texas A&M instead of Missouri, since disrespecting Mizzou has become a hobby for some Sooner loyalists.

But the SEC must serve 16 masters in making a schedule. It can’t produce a schedule for, say, Georgia, then move on down the line. All the schedules must work in harmony.

Ole Miss, for example, got its two traditional rivals, Louisiana State and Mississippi State. And Kiffin apparently wanted Auburn or Arkansas or Alabama to round out the slate.

But Auburn’s trio was the easiest to decide — historic rivals Georgia and Alabama, plus Vanderbilt to ease the weight of having to play Georgia and Alabama.

Arkansas’ options were loaded, with old Southwest Conference rivals Texas and Texas A&M, plus new SEC rivals LSU and Missouri, who both have extended turns as the Thanksgiving weekend showdown game.

And Alabama’s rivals were somewhat set. Tennessee and Auburn are ancient foes, as is Mississippi State, 84 miles from Tuscaloosa. That’s almost three times closer than Norman to Fayetteville.

That left Ole Miss without a third partner. Hello, Oklahoma.

The SEC could have tried to keep the new west wing of the conference playing within its circle.

Texas got its three old-school rivals: OU, Texas A&M and Arkansas. It would have been a scheduling crime to do anything else.

And the SEC could have paired OU and A&M, subbing out Missouri or LSU for the Aggies, and Ole Miss for the Sooners. Could have paired Arkansas and A&M, dropping LSU from the Razorbacks and Missouri from the Aggies.

But that kind of doctoring leaves holes elsewhere.

In the end, the SEC did a fairly solid job of juggling geography, history and competitive balance.

The latter is not easy. How is the SEC supposed to know who’s going to be stout in 2029? We don’t know who’s going to be stout on Saturday.

OU didn’t get an easy draw. Texas is Texas. Missouri has been solid under Eli Drinkwitz. Ole Miss has been more than stout under Kiffin. But what if Florida fires Billy Napier and hires either Drinkwitz or Kiffin? Who knows if the Mizzou and Mississippi success continues?

The schedules of Alabama (Auburn, Tennessee and Mississippi State) and Georgia (Auburn, Florida and South Carolina) look relatively light, but that’s in part because Alabama and Georgia aren’t each other’s annual foe.

Texas A&M’s three annual rivals look rough — Texas, LSU and Missouri. And the Aggies didn’t even want the expanded SEC in the first place.

Sports Illustrated ranked A&M and Arkansas (LSU, Texas and Missouri) tied for the toughest annual opponents, with OU third.

But who knows? In the end, Venables is right. Just make the schedule, then make sure your team shows up for kickoff.

berry.tramel@tulsaworld.com

https://tulsaworld.com/sports/college/ou/article_c2f98861-49b9-43c2-a23f-c3145701bedc.html

Imagine it was 2000, or 1990, or 2010, when these rivals were made.  One might think one program got off easy, and another very hard, and then found four years later teams had shifted from very good to mediocre, and the reverse.

I'm not even really sure it even matters all that much.  For A&M, outside of Texas and possibly LSU, the 3rd "rival" is questionable at best.  We got stuck with South Carolina for the first dozen years, it never really garnered much interest.  We got stuck with Mizzou now, ho hum as well.  I mean, I guess we were conference mates for 16 years in the XII, and now 12 in the SEC but I don't think anybody could tell you much of anything about Mizzou/A&M.  I barely remember we played them last year and won. 

With a 9 game schedule we should have a lot of interesting matchups, and finally a true home and away rotation, even if it's not sequential years. 

Yeah all this.  Plus, as you have noted before, it's all likely to change again in the relatively near future anyway, when the SEC expands again.

I'm not even really sure it even matters all that much.  For A&M, outside of Texas and possibly LSU, the 3rd "rival" is questionable at best.  We got stuck with South Carolina for the first dozen years, it never really garnered much interest.  We got stuck with Mizzou now, ho hum as well.  I mean, I guess we were conference mates for 16 years in the XII, and now 12 in the SEC but I don't think anybody could tell you much of anything about Mizzou/A&M.  I barely remember we played them last year and won. 

With a 9 game schedule we should have a lot of interesting matchups, and finally a true home and away rotation, even if it's not sequential years.

I've said in previous posts that OU-Mizzou was almost a given. Prior to Mizzou's move to the SEC, we were conference mates going back to 1920 in the MVIAA, which soon split into the MVC and the Big 6, which would become the Big 7 with the addition of Colorado and the Big 8 with the addition of oSu. So there's a long history there. It includes Don Faurot developing the Split-T offense just before WWII and teaching it to Jim Tatum and Bud Wilkinson at Iowa Pre-Flight during the war. Tatum got hired as OU's HFC in 1946, with the condition that he would bring Wilkinson as his assistant. Tatum left after a year (in a squabble over who had control over the recruiting slush fund) and Wilkinson went on to use Faurot's offense to build OU into the winningest program of the 1950s.

For various reasons, OU fans never got fired up to play Missouri. OU usually (72% of the time) won, although a lot of the games were close ones. OU fans did not enjoy the atmosphere in games at Columbia. The Mizzou fans were supposedly hostile. Mizzou supposedly watered the field and cut the grass high to slow down the wishbone offense. Anyway, we figured that we would get Missouri as an assigned rival, and we did, and that's fine. We've played 97 games with each other, might as well play some more.

So the question was who would be the 3rd assigned rival. And it's Ole Miss, which seems fine with me. It's too bad that Lane Kiffin does not like it. And worse that he's complaining about it in public. Not a good look.

Ole Miss has zero SEC or even shared SEC championships since 1963 (60+ years).
They never won the West division, in 31 years.
.
There's a reason they were initially paired with Vanderbilt....and even that wasn't enough to help them.

Imagine it was 2000, or 1990, or 2010, when these rivals were made.  One might think one program got off easy, and another very hard, and then found four years later teams had shifted from very good to mediocre, and the reverse.

Uhh, no.  Tennessee got off easy in any and every era.  It's bullshit.