Dooley’s Dozen: 12 ways scheduling changes could affect the SEC

It’s less than two weeks until the SEC spring meeting in Destin, and they will be lively and in person. The league had to do the last two years virtually, which may have been the way to go this year if Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher are in connecting rooms and decide to have a steel cage match.

But we digress. There is plenty Greg Sankey and the power brokers of America’s Conference will have to discuss during these meetings – the transfer portal, NIL, and most importantly for the fans, the scheduling of the conference games when Oklahoma and Texas join the league in 2025.

Athletic directors from the league have had plenty of private and sometimes public discussions about what will happen. One thing I wonder – how much input will the coaches have?

Maybe very little. And most of it is usually presented individually to the respective ADs before these meetings ever start.

Everybody has a theory on how this will all break down. We only know one thing for certain – forget everything you have known about scheduling in the SEC. Almost anything can happen.

Dooley’s Dozen breaks down the possibilities.

Some rivalries could be shortchanged

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This includes Florida-LSU, which has become one of the fiercest rivalries in the conference (mostly going back to the hurricane game in 2016). My guess is Florida will lobby to keep that game on an annual basis because it is an automatic big gate.

But the league is going to be trying to figure out how to keep multiple rivalry games together in this new world and it won’t be easy. Still, if LSU is no longer a permanent opponent, the two teams would likely play every other year.

... and Auburn could return

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That was such a big game in the Steve Spurrier era. Certainly, Florida fans were not happy when the other Tigers were dropped from the yearly schedule because it’s the easiest place to get to from Gainesville (other than Jacksonville, of course), but there is a good chance Auburn will come back on as one of Florida’s permanent opponents.

We might miss out on Nick-Jimbo yearly

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Let’s say they go to pods (which we will get to), which means Alabama could end up in the same pod as Texas A&M for scheduling purposes. But it’s going to be tricky to put the teams in the same pod when Alabama has too many traditional rivalries (Auburn, Tennessee, LSU).

By 2025, Saban could be retired anyway, but the level of vitriol between the two programs will lead to high drama for a long time.

Divisions could go away

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That seems the most likely scenario because of a 16-team league. Now that the NCAA has ruled you can play a championship game without divisions, there are ADs who have already told me that divisions are likely to go the way of the dodo.

I don’t see how this helps the cries for parity if teams know they are eliminated from Atlanta with a second loss, but it does get the two best teams in what is essentially the first playoff game.

... or they could keep them

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You never know. Maybe the league decides to have two eight-team divisions. Crazier things have happened. It would keep things spicier on the back end of the schedule.

It still won’t be balanced

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You could sit here today and come up with a schedule for all 16 teams and there is no question that fans of about four SEC teams would be calling talk shows and posting nasty things on fan sites about how the SEC is out to get them.

College football is cyclical, but we also know if you get Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas A&M, Florida and LSU on your schedule, nobody is going to be happy.

Georgia will see College Station

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It’s amazing how the Bulldogs have never played at Kyle Field. It’s part of the reason that the schedules have been criticized for being lazy (for example, Florida is playing its third game there in 2022 since the Aggies joined the league). Same for A&M never going to Lexington.

The truth is that Georgia is scheduled to go to Texas A&M in 2024 if that schedule holds. But the best part of the new schedule should be that everybody gets to play games during their four-year careers on every campus in the SEC (except for neutral site games like Florida-Georgia). It’s kind of stupid that hasn’t been the case in the last decade.

We probably will see nine conference games

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Or not. There are certainly programs that have held on dearly to the notion that a nine-game SEC schedule is bad because it makes it more difficult to become bowl eligible. I would hope they would be shouted down this time around because we just had a 10-game conference schedule two years ago and it was amazing.

Saban has been calling for this for a long time. Maybe this will be a parting gift.

And about the pods

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So, when the story leaked at last year’s SEC meetings that Texas and Oklahoma were going to join the league, the SEC Network within minutes had this graphic showing four pods of four teams each.

Was that someone coming up with an idea or did the SEC react quickly to get that plan on the network once the story was out? I tend to believe the latter, but there probably will be some form of pods for scheduling purposes only.

It may get easier for Arkansas

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The Razorbacks have been handed brutal schedules the last three years. They call it the “three-peat” in Fayetteville because it has been deemed in three straight seasons as being the toughest in the country.

Some of that comes from being in the West, but if divisions go away you have to believe that it won’t get worse and could get better. Then again, they could, but that puts Sam Pittman in a pod that includes Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M. So, maybe not.

A&M and Texas may have no choice

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This is a rivalry game that has been played 118 times, but zero times since 2011 when A&M joined the SEC. There has been speculation that A&M does not want to be in the same pod with Texas, but geographically it does make sense that they are.

Either way, they are probably going to play every other year at the minimum.

Somehow, Georgia will get an easier schedule than Florida

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Well, that’s what Gator fans think every year anyway. But the reason Georgia’s schedule has been easier lately than Florida’s is that Georgia has been better than Florida. Trap games certainly did not exist for the Bulldogs last year and UGA has benefitted from cross-division rival Auburn being shaky of late.

But Florida at the same time has found a lot of different ways to lose to bad LSU teams the last two seasons. No matter what, Gators fans will not be happy with whatever the SEC decides.

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