If SEC football is hell-bent on nixing divisions, I have two schedule ideas | Toppmeyer
If you’re an SEC football fan of a certain age – say, around my age – you don’t have strong memories of the conference before it embraced two divisions.
After the SEC expanded from 10 to 12 teams by adding Arkansas and South Carolina, it boldly split into divisions in 1992. That allowed the conference to stage an SEC Championship, thanks to an NCAA rule allowing such an event if a conference featured divisions.
Thirty years later, divisions are passé, especially after the NCAA Division I Council voted last week to stop requiring conferences to have divisions to stage a league championship. The Pac-12 and Mountain West ditched divisions for 2022, and the ACC aims to do so by 2023.
Oklahoma and Texas will join the SEC by the 2025 season, and that expansion could spark the end of the SEC’s division era. One, big 16-team family.
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The SEC has not finalized a scheduling model for its expanded future, but here are the leading suggestions, according to Sports Illustrated and ESPN:
Option A – An eight-game SEC schedule. Each team would have one designated rival that it would play every year – think Alabama-Auburn; Ole Miss-Mississippi State; Florida-Georgia – and the other seven conference opponents would flip-flop each year, allowing a team to play all of its non-rival conference peers once every two years.
Option B – A nine-game SEC schedule. Each team would have three designated rivals it would play every year, plus six rotating SEC opponents. Once again, this would allow a team to play each conference foe at least once every two years.
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I’m not going to spend much time dissecting Option A, for a couple of reasons.
For one, I favor plans that offer more conference games. Does anyone think Alabama vs. Southern Miss is better for the sport than Alabama vs. an SEC foe?
An eight-game conference schedule leaves room for more cupcake games that pad coaches’ records. Sorry, but this is a big-boy league. If a coach needs gimme victories to remain employed, then just pay the coach his buyout and move on.
Also, an embrace of Option A would mean some historic rivalries that help make college football what it is would not occur on an annual basis – games like Auburn-Georgia would be forced to take a backseat to the Iron Bowl and the “Cocktail Party.”
Option B offers an additional conference game and preserves more annual rivalries, so if these are the two leading options, then I’ll throw my weight behind this choice.
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Constructing a schedule for this model is a chore, though. Some teams have three or more natural rivals, while others only have one or two rivalries worth protecting.
Preserving one rivalry may come at the expense of another team's optimal schedule. Also, this model is not ideal for creating equitable strengths of schedule – a team's schedule strength would be based, in part, on how strong its three rivals are – but surely strength of schedule would be factored in to a degree.
I devoted two hours one night this week trying to align rivalries for Option B in a way that offered a semblance of fairness. Several times, I thought I had a great plan until I reached the final few puzzle pieces that wouldn’t snap into place.
Here are top two options I devised for this 3-6 scheduling model (three annual rivalries, plus six rotating SEC foes):
My Plan 1 for each team's three rivals in a 3-6 model
Alabama: Auburn, LSU, Tennessee
Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Mississippi State
Auburn: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky
Florida: Georgia, Oklahoma, Vanderbilt
Georgia: Florida, Auburn, South Carolina
Kentucky: South Carolina, Auburn, Tennessee
LSU: Texas A&M, Alabama, Ole Miss
Ole Miss: Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, LSU
Mississippi State: Ole Miss, Arkansas, Texas A&M
Missouri: Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina
Oklahoma: Texas, Missouri, Florida
South Carolina: Kentucky, Georgia, Missouri
Tennessee: Vanderbilt, Alabama, Kentucky
Texas: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas A&M
Texas A&M: LSU, Texas, Mississippi State
Vanderbilt: Tennessee, Ole Miss, Florida
My Plan 2 for each team's three rivals in a 3-6 model
Alabama: Auburn, LSU, Tennessee
Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Tennessee
Auburn: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi State
Florida: Georgia, Kentucky, Oklahoma
Georgia: Florida, Auburn, South Carolina
Kentucky: South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi State
LSU: Texas A&M, Alabama, Ole Miss
Ole Miss: Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, LSU
Mississippi State: Ole Miss, Kentucky, Auburn
Missouri: Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina
Oklahoma: Texas, Missouri, Florida
South Carolina: Kentucky, Georgia, Missouri
Tennessee: Vanderbilt, Alabama, Arkansas
Texas: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas A&M
Texas A&M: LSU, Texas, Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt: Tennessee, Ole Miss, Texas A&M
Have a better idea? Well, considering the SEC placed Missouri in its East division for the past decade, the conference probably would benefit from your direction.
Blake Toppmeyer is an SEC Columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer. If you enjoy Blake’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: If SEC football wants to drop divisions, I have two schedule ideas
