I'd hate to see the SEC add a North Carolina or Virginia school. Those states have been pretty good to UT in recruiting and the kids that want to play in the SEC don't need a reason to stay home. I understand the SEC wanting/needing to move into new markets to increase TV money to make expansion worth it so Clemson or FSU make no sense. I'd prefer to add Oklahoma and OSU (if they have to be a pair) then divide the SEC into four 4 team divisions. Tennessee Vandy Kentucky South Carolina (The 12 other schools would never allow a division this weak, trade UK with either UF or UGa) Alabama Auburn Florida Georgia Mississippi Mississippi State Arkansas LSU Oklahoma Oklahoma State Texas A&M Missouri
How do you determine a champion with four divisions? A conference championship playoff would never be allowed to happen.
In terms of fans, yeah. In terms of Nattys, yeah. Nobody is going to make the argument that Auburn is on their level all time. With that being said, Auburn leads the series in the past 35 years, so afterthought isn't the word I'd use.[/QUOTE] What's their record against Saban? Nobody gives a damn what Auburn did against Mike Shula.
I think a 16 team conference could only be done if you didn't schedule cross divisional opponents at the start of the season, and rather seeded them the last few weeks to set up a defacto playoff pitting the divisions against one another.
What's their record against Saban? Nobody gives a damn what Auburn did against Mike Shula.[/QUOTE] They've gone 3-6 (not counting LSU) against the best coach of all time, hardly an afterthought. In that same time period, Tennessee has gone 0-9 and gotten run out of the stadium in 6 of those 9.
What does Tennessee have to with Auburn vs. Alabama? Did I miss the triple threat match games?[/QUOTE] Nothing, just throwing it in there.
Have conference scheduled as follows: 3 games vs division 4 games vs one other division (rotating yearly) 1 + 1 game against a protected rival in each of the remaing two divisions. The team with the best record among each of the divisions that play a full round robin meet in the title game. A bit complicated, but not too hard to understand. The MWC actually did this exact thing back in the late 90s (IIRC). They didn't pull it off, but it works in theory and could work in practice if done correctly
Sounds like it would necessarily eliminate some historic annual rivalries. I'm not interested in swapping Bama for some crap like UNC or VT.
Tennessee-Bama would be a protected rival, and you put Auburn and Bama in the same division. This would work.
We'd end up losing out on an annual bout with UGA or UF. It would be a net negative. We keep trying to invent the wheel to have a more "fair" way of determining a champion. For most fans, almost every season the champion isn't going to be their team. But the season still has meaning and will still live on in their memories because of how things turned out in that Florida game (or whatever rivalry games their team has). I could tell you more about the 2001 UGA game than I could about all our combined games against Missouri. We are giving up what makes college football special.
Suppose, just for the sake of argument, you add VT and NC State. Four divisions: Vols Kentucky Vandy Virginia Tech South Carolina NC State Florida Georgia Bama Auburn Ole Miss MSU Arkansas A&M LSU Missouri LSU kinda gets the short end re:rivalries here, because they have to choose between preserving a historical rivalry with Ole Miss or a more recent (but more heated) one with Bama. But for Tennessee, it's pretty simple. Three protected rivalries are Florida, Alabama, and Arkansas. Every year we play those three, VT, UK, Vandy, and the three non-rival teams from the division that we're paired with that year (meaning we play every team at least once every three years)
In that sort of setup, you may have these as protected rivalries Tennessee: Florida, Bama, Arky Kentucky: Georgia, MSU, Missouri Vandy: South Carolina, Ole Miss, A&M VT: NC State, Auburn, LSU South Carolina: Vandy, Alabama, Arkansas NC State: VT, Miss St, Missouri Florida: Tennessee, Ole Miss*, LSU Georgia: Kentucky, Auburn, A&M *I intentionally gave Florida Ole Miss instead of Bama because I think Tennessee/Bama/LSU is an unreasonably tough combo. Alabama: Tennessee, South Carolina, LSU Auburn: VT, Georgia, A&M Ole Miss: Vandy, Florida, Arkansas MSU: Kentucky, NC State, Missouri Arkansas: Tennessee, South Carolina, Ole Miss A&M: Vandy, Georgia, Auburn LSU: VT, Florida, Bama Missouri: Kentucky, NC St, Miss St Maybe need to do a bit of tweaking here and there, but this is totally off the top of my head and preserves pretty much all of the biggest rivalries for each team except LSU/Ole Miss
How about moving a&m and Missouri with the two new teams since they haven't had time to build up old rivalries? Then only having 1 out of division permanent rival such as UT vs bama, LSU and Ole Miss and so on. UT would then only lose UK on a yearly basis and in basketball keep the current system of all 16 teams together instead of divisional. vols georgia florida vandy bama auburn kentucky lsu ole miss miss st ark south carolina new team 1 new team 2 a&m missouri
Four things: 1. Doesn't work so well if we expand East 2. Only having one permanent rival doesn't make the schedules work out so smoothly (although this could be overcome) 3. South Carolina is screwed here. All their division rivals are three states away, and they lose their three biggest rivals 4. Kentucky loses their biggest rival and Mississippi St loses one of the longest running rivalries in the SEC (vs Bama) Edit: 5. Arkansas actually does have history with A&M and a border war with Mizzou, so LSU is really the only one there that doesn't fit
We don't have a historical rival among the four westernmost SEC teams, but we have a pretty memorable history with Arkansas, and giving us LSU would make our three permanent rivals Florida, Bama, and LSU, which is suicide. So Arkansas works
