SEC Football Scheduling

[SteelCurtain74]

According to Matt Wyatt, there is talk of changing the football scheduling process in the future. If it was up to you, what changes would you want to see? Personally, if we kept divisions, there would need to be reshuffling by moving Auburn to the East and bringing Missouri to the West. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the cross division rivalries either. Alabama/Tennessee hasn't been competitive in at least a decade.

 

[Drebin]

According to Matt Wyatt, there is talk of changing the football scheduling process in the future. If it was up to you, what changes would you want to see? Personally, if we kept divisions, there would need to be reshuffling by moving Auburn to the East and bringing Missouri to the West. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the cross division rivalries either. Alabama/Tennessee hasn't been competitive in at least a decade.

I don't think you're going to see teams change from west to east and vice versa, although it makes sense. I would expect us to see more of pod-style scheduling situation. But with our location, you know our pod will probably contain LSU, Alabama, and Ole Miss, so it's never gonna get easy for us.

 

[DesotoCountyDawg]

Probably would never be easy no matter how it was grouped.

Do away with divisions and do a pod like system for scheduling. Two best teams play for the championship.

 

[SteelCurtain74]

I don't think you're going to see teams change from west to east and vice versa, although it makes sense. I would expect us to see more of pod-style scheduling situation. But with our location, you know our pod will probably contain LSU, Alabama, and Ole Miss, so it's never gonna get easy for us.

I'm good with the pod system but wouldn't that require expansion to get to 16 teams. Not sure how you would do pod's with 14.

 

[Russ Wheeler]

I want to see pods with us doing away with the championship game, but to do that all conferences would have to do it, and that won't happen, at least in a coordinated effort.

 

[Maroonthirteen]

Just get rid of divisions all together. 1 or 2 permanents for traditional rivalries, rotate the remaining 6-7 games so we play others more often.

also schedule so that State and OM don't have conference home games on the same weekends.

 

[campshelbydog842003]

Just get rid of divisions all together. 1 or 2 permanents for traditional rivalries, rotate the remaining 6-7 games so we play others more often.

also schedule so that State and OM don't have conference home games on the same weekends.

I like all of these ideas.

 

[PirateDawg]

Do away with the division, rotate the schedules and have the top two teams playoff.

According to Matt Wyatt, there is talk of changing the football scheduling process in the future. If it was up to you, what changes would you want to see? Personally, if we kept divisions, there would need to be reshuffling by moving Auburn to the East and bringing Missouri to the West. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the cross division rivalries either. Alabama/Tennessee hasn't been competitive in at least a decade.

 

[johnson86-1]

According to Matt Wyatt, there is talk of changing the football scheduling process in the future. If it was up to you, what changes would you want to see? Personally, if we kept divisions, there would need to be reshuffling by moving Auburn to the East and bringing Missouri to the West. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the cross division rivalries either. Alabama/Tennessee hasn't been competitive in at least a decade.

Some ideas:

(1) A pod system and a four team playoff for the championship would make a lot of money. Not sure how you do it with 14 teams though and of course you're potentially making it harder to get 2 teams in the playoff, which would potentially offset the financial benefit. And then you're really making it impossible for football players to prepare for finals.

(2) Start games early enough for two bye weeks during the season, regardless of how labor day falls.

(3) Combined with #2, nobody should have home day games for the first three or four weeks. That might give up a little bit of tv money, but really need to make the live experience more enjoyable for people paying for tickets. Or at the least, do an 11:00, 2:30, 6:00 feature game with no competition, then put everybody else into 7:00 and 7:30 time slots. Then you get at least one SEC feature game on all day. Still probably not ideal for ESPN, but what they lose by not having programming for multiple channels all day maybe they make up by having a feature game with less in market competition.

(4) Move Auburn to East and Mizzou to West. This will probably balance out divisions long term. Bama v. UT is not competitive and I can't imagine the number of UT fans delusional enough to want that going forward really matter. Then you end up with the following cross divisional permanent rivals: Bama/Auburn; LSU/Florida; A&M/UGA; MSU/UK; Ole Miss/Vandy; MIzzou/UT; Ark/USCe. You don't lose any games that matter. Also maybe let a rivalry develop between Mizzou and Arky and then can try to develop more of a rivalry between A&M and LSU.

(5) Try to minimize home game overlap between MSU/Ole Miss and also Bama/Auburn/UGA. MSU and Ole Miss could use the help with attendance. Probably doesn't matter as much for Bama/Auburn/UGA, but no reason to have all three of them playing home game and can't hurt to maximize the weekends that only one of them has a home game .

 

[o_dawgnabit]

"Dear sweet baby Jesus, please move Alabama and Auburn to the East and Vanderbilt and Missouri to the West"

 

[PirateDawg]

Why play Alabama at all? Let's just forfeit the game and move to the next game. It's like an NFL team playing a college team.

 

[maroonmania]

According to Matt Wyatt, there is talk of changing the football scheduling process in the future. If it was up to you, what changes would you want to see? Personally, if we kept divisions, there would need to be reshuffling by moving Auburn to the East and bringing Missouri to the West. I wouldn't mind getting rid of the cross division rivalries either. Alabama/Tennessee hasn't been competitive in at least a decade.

I would do away with divisions first. Second, every team can have 2 permanent opponents to preserve rivalries but the other opponents are round robin every year. Championship game would have the teams that finish 1 and 2 with the appropriate tiebreakers as needed. Lots of years the best 2 teams in the conference are actually in the same division. This model would allow those teams to still play. Bama dominance lately makes it difficult for another West team to ever get in unless they have a historical season like LSU did in 2019.

 

[vhdawg]

FWIW, the current rotation ends with the 2025 season, so they have to do SOMETHING in the next five years regardless.

 

[Drebin]

"Dear sweet baby Jesus, please move Alabama and Auburn to the East and Vanderbilt and Missouri to the West"

Joking aside, moving Bama and Auburn to the east solves a lot of problems.

First of all, Bama can keep traditional rivalries with Auburn and Tennessee.

Next, Auburn can keep the traditional rivalry with Georgia.

And congrats, Ole Miss! Now that you like to crow about beating Bama twice in the last decade, you can have them as a permanent crossover opponent now!

And most importantly, it would even out the competitive balance of the conference.

Of course it would never happen because Alabama would never agree to it.

 

[drumrcraig]

And most importantly, it would even out the competitive balance of the conference.

I disagree with this one comment. It wouldn't even out the balance, it would just shift it to the East. You would have UGa, UF, Bama, and Auburn in the East. Then A&M & LSU (who remains to be seen if they will be any good going forward) in the West. A&M would be the only team left in the West that was above .500 last year.

 

[patdog]

Eliminate divisions. 4 permanent opponents, rotate 4 of the remaining 9 teams each year with 2 teams rotating off and 2 rotating on each year. Our permanents would be something like Mississippi, A&M, Bama and Kentucky.