I think Coach O is about to flame out. Under him they’ve recruited more outside LA, will be interesting to see if that trend continues if he’s fired or if his successor goes back to keeping it more in state.
I think the reality is more likely to be that TX and OU gonna do like they've always done, and whatever big players they're after (from wherever) are the same players we're after ---- and it's always been like that. So OU gonna get OK, NE, TX, and KS players just like always, and TX gonna get the same TX players just like always. And we're going to get the same stuff as usual, too. What I think adding TX/OU does .... and potentially Mich and OSU, which I think is a real stretch .... is just force what would be legit OOC games into being conference games. For us, that just sucks right now because we suck. Adding more teams to the schedule that we just can't hang with. About the only games I watch anymore are when I think we have a chance to beat somebody, or if somebody has a chance to beat Bama. That's it. That means I've had a lot of free Saturdays for a while now, and adding TX or OU to the mix just means even more free Saturdays for me.
We were already playing home and homes with OU every 4 years. We were already scheduling teams like Oregon, or generational peak WVU. It doesn't change much.
totally agree. but since we don't 100% know how they're going to break things up (starting in 2025 anyway), who knows whether we'd end up with OU on our side of the house. .... to that end, we've all seen ideas of putting bama in the east... and that wouldn't affect us at all since we got them every year already. ..... UF and UGA probably really don't like that idea, though. LOL. f'em.
Look at it this way: if there are 9 SEC opponents every year or less, they will need to split the conference into 4 divisions for the scheduling to work out such that every team plays in each other's stadium at least once every 4 years. Due to the long history between the original SEC members, this will certainly be a strong desire in order to at least give some window dressing to "tradition." What pod could result in something appreciably worse than Bama, Florida, and UGA every year? None. And we already play them every year. Tennessee isn't coming out of this worse. It isn't possible. Switch any of those for Texas and I smile. Switch any of those for OU and I honestly don't hate it. Switch any of those for LSU or Auburn and it changes nothing, really. But regardless we are either going to be in the north or in the east, so at least one of those three is probably not in the pod. If they divide us into two divisions, and, say, add Auburn to the East then the protected rivalry situation goes away and again we are better off in terms of difficulty. We are already in the worst case scenario. Any injection of chaos or uncertainty can only help us. Shake it up. Because we are buried already it may let us shake loose. I can think of many, many favorable situations that could result in seasons where we don't have to play 3 Top 5 teams in a period of 6 weeks.
Odds are, we end up in a pod with at least one of Vandy or UK, and one of Missouri or South Carolina. That automatically means our pod is one of the two more favorable, no matter how the rest shakes out. If it isn't geographical but rather random, what random 3 other teams is appreciably harder than Bama, Florida, and UGA? Let's try: Bama, LSU, and UGA? Looks the same to me in the grand scheme of things. Bama, Auburn, UGA? No worse. Bama, Florida, LSU? Still looks basically the same. So to me, even if you just decided who the top 3 teams were in the conference and put Tennessee in that pod because [uck fay] them and [uck fay] Tennessee, the end schedule would be the same as what Tennessee's been rolling with most years. It isn't because I think OU and TX are easier opponents (but I do think that), but because the status quo of playing the East plus Bama looks as ugly as the West's equivalent of Auburn's schedule: the West plus UGA. Or LSU's. The West plus Florida. It ain't getting worse.
I hadn't thought about it this way. But you're right, our conference schedule can't really get any harder than it currently is.
So likely worst case from what you are saying is Bama, Auburn, and Vandy. Yep, that's better than being locked to Florida, Georgia, and Bama. Benefit = no longer playing Florida every year. Or, one can think of it as the higher likelihood of playing one of the Mississippi's or Arkansas in any given season, at the expense of a lower likelihood of playing Georgia or Florida. Not a huge difference, but we simply aren't going to end up worse off.
And I appreciate it, I haven't heard much about how they would actually do it, and have just been game theorying it.
