The Spurrier SEC Championship Plan

[give_him 6]

Didn't see this on here yet.....(merge if needed)

Steve Spurrier, South Carolina evolving to look like SEC champion - Andy Staples - SI.com

[bamawriter]

I have no problem with self-serving proposals. I have a big problem with moronic self-serving proposals.

[TrueOrange]

Step 1: Play football
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Step 2: ?
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Step 3: Profit!

[AJeray4TN]

Yeah, that'll be the day.

[ukvols]

What's so bad about it? It makes sense. It won't happen, because it would greatly lessen the significance of 37.5% of the league games. But, as a matter of fairness, it makes sense.

[AJeray4TN]

Originally Posted by ukvols

What's so bad about it? It makes sense. It won't happen, because it would greatly lessen the significance of 37.5% of the league games. But, as a matter of fairness, it makes sense.

Think this through:

With 6 conference games this year, lets use South Carolina and Florida as an example. Both teams go 5-1 in the division, but South Carolina beats Florida in the head-to-head. What happens if South Carolina loses its two western division games and Florida wins its two? You'd prefer a 5-3 South Carolina team playing for the east, over a 7-1 Florida team?

It's the SEC's prerogative if this is the direction they want to move, but why would they want to risk it? You would instantly be setting up a system that could devalue your best teams, and lessen your chances of getting a team in the National Championship game.

It will never happen.

[ukvols]

Originally Posted by AJeray4TN

Think this through:

With 6 conference games this year, lets use South Carolina and Florida as an example. Both teams go 5-1 in the division, but South Carolina beats Florida in the head-to-head. What happens if South Carolina loses its two western division games and Florida wins its two? You'd prefer a 5-3 South Carolina team playing for the east, over a 7-1 Florida team?

It's the SEC's prerogative if this is the direction they want to move, but why would they want to risk it? You would instantly be setting up a system that could devalue your best teams, and lessen your chances of getting a team in the National Championship game.

It will never happen.

Those are good points. UGA getting a much weaker schedule than UT, for example, last year and this coming season, is a good reason for the switch - to avoid a team winning the division solely on the luck of an easier schedule. You raise the possibility of the team without the top division record simply outplaying the other contender against the West teams.

Perhaps a good compromise would be to change the top tiebreaker for a three-way tie, in which three teams beat each other, to strength of schedule. So, if UT, UGA, and UF beat each other and all finish 7-1, the division winner would be whoever's West opponents had the best combined conference record. This was a quick suggestion at 2:40am. I reserve the right to wake up and decide it was a stupid idea.

One correction: I said that making Spurrier's change would devalue 37.5% of the league games. That's no longer true; since 6 of the 8 games will now be within the division, only 25% of the games would be devalued.

[DarthVisor]

Had we beaten The Barn, this would not have been an issue.

[Lawrence Wright]

Bad idea.

If anything else, increasing the SEC to 14 teams will result in more intra division games, so the likelihood of a UGA '11 or MSU '98 scenario decreases.

[VolsSportsFan]

Sorry Spurrier, that's not how things work.