New SEC Divisions

[wmcovol]

I have lived in Texas all my life almost longhorns out number aggies 3 to here I think Texas would be a smart add for all envolved

I lived there for several years, traveled most of the state and I agree with you on Longhorns outnumbering aggies. I am not saying adding Texas is bad numbers-wise but A&M brand has grown significantly in Texas since they joined the SEC. But texas fans watch the aggies hoping they lose just like they watch the horns hoping they win. Its a "hate" unlike most other rivialries. Not alot of "mixed' marriages among Horns and Aggies.....just saying.

 

[ru4real-really?]

I read the word logical. Logical would be the following: tenn, ga, vandy, ky then Aub, Ala, Fl, and SC the other two are logical as shown

 

[volfan51128]

If they do pods, it makes more sense to go like this:
1. OK, TX, TX AM, ARK
2. LSU, Ol' MIss, MS State, Alabama
3. Mizzou, Vandy, UK, TN
4. GA, USC, FL, Auburn

If the split it in half, would make sense to go east west like this. The only difference I could see in this is swapping Mizzou with Alabama.

West: OK, TX, TX AM, ARK, LSU, Ol' MIss, MS State, Alabama
East: Mizzou, Vandy, UK, TN, GA, USC, FL, Aub

Just my thoughts.

 

[ArmchairQB]

I definitely want to keep the P5 OOC requirement. But I don't know if I'd require a home-and-home because I like the neutral site games.

Yeah true. I've always kind of wished we'd play Arkansas in Memphis whenever they're on the schedule, for that matter. Give West Tennessee a much-deserved break from the 400 mile trip for a ball game, and have an opportunity to use it as a recruiting tool for Memphis athletes, too.

 

[RexTheWonderDog]

When Saban got to Alabama he used this phrase when speaking to his Bama team about the opposition: Make Their Ass Quit.

Some people are doing just that.

 

[Jaws]

Well, we haven't beaten alot of people in 17 years and Florida is much less formidable than Alabama.

True. But we also must understand that Bama currently vs what Bama may become when Saban retires are two totally different scenarios. I’m not saying Bama suddenly becomes Vandy or even a Missouri/Miss St type team, but it’s safe to say they won’t remain Saban dynasty Bama. My point is, while it’s natural to look at the immediacy of this, I can’t see Saban at Bama more than about 8 more years or so, unless he plans to coach into his 80’s. He’ll be 70 years old in October. So while it’s daunting and even depressing to be coupled with Bama now and for the next 5 years or so, it won’t always be.

Think Florida when Spurrier left and they had a few years of malaise under Zook, or when Meyer left and they became very average under Muschamp/Mac. Bama will fall off when Saban leaves, I have no doubt.

 

[kcvols1]

While the nostalgic part of me would love to see the annual Tennessee-Auburn series return, overall this would blow for Tennessee imo. I'd rather switch places with Georgia.

View attachment 382590

Cool with it. Hate all them boys.

 

[wmcovol]

If they do pods, it makes more sense to go like this:
1. OK, TX, TX AM, ARK
2. LSU, Ol' MIss, MS State, Alabama
3. Mizzou, Vandy, UK, TN
4. GA, USC, FL, Auburn

If the split it in half, would make sense to go east west like this. The only difference I could see in this is swapping Mizzou with Alabama.

West: OK, TX, TX AM, ARK, LSU, Ol' MIss, MS State, Alabama
East: Mizzou, Vandy, UK, TN, GA, USC, FL, Aub

Just my thoughts.

Pods would be terrible for Tennessee. Yeah, the pod opponents are easier but Tennessee would lose ALL of their premier annual rivals ( Ga, FL& Ala).

 

[MWAVolfan]

Pods would be terrible for Tennessee. Yeah, the pod opponents are easier but Tennessee would lose ALL of their premier annual rivals ( Ga, FL& Ala).

Everything im seeing in articles is talking about pods of four, not two huge divisions.

 

[MWAVolfan]

Pods would be terrible for Tennessee. Yeah, the pod opponents are easier but Tennessee would lose ALL of their premier annual rivals ( Ga, FL& Ala).

lets hold off to see the pods they come up with. Tennessee is a better fit with GA and UF than Auburn is.

 

[airvols]

If you’re smart you want two divisions so all you divisions have to play the same teams. That makes it a level playing field.

 

[wmcovol]

lets hold off to see the pods they come up with. Tennessee is a better fit with GA and UF than Auburn is.

Ga-Aub is the oldest rivalry in the SEC. Neither school wants that to end and it is a competitive game still. Auburn also had a great rivalry with Florida during the 90s when SEC East teams played 2 cross-over games per year.

The pod with Vandy, Ky and Mizzou would result in a sizable reduction in Tennessee season ticket sales. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to buy a season ticket if those 3 are your annual rivals....plus I'd doubt any of those 3 games would ever make prime time afternoon or night games.

 

[RDU VOL#14]

Ga-Aub is the oldest rivalry in the SEC. Neither school wants that to end and it is a competitive game still. Auburn also had a great rivalry with Florida during the 90s when SEC East teams played 2 cross-over games per year.

The pod with Vandy, Ky and Mizzou would result in a sizable reduction in Tennessee season ticket sales. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to buy a season ticket if those 3 are your annual rivals....plus I'd doubt any of those 3 games would ever make prime time afternoon or night games.

We would only play 1 or 2 home games against those teams each season, the same as now The rest of it would be a mixed bag every season with most likely a good OOC team mixed in.

 

[UTK]

Maybe these pods could work.

Pod 1: UT, Vandy, Ole Miss, MSU Central
Pod 2: Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas, LSU West
Pod 3: FL, GA, SC, Kentucky East
Pod 4: Texas, A&M, OU, Mizzou. Old Big 12


I know the pods make more sense to switch the Miss schools with the Alabama schools but that's brutal for our Vols so screw that lol

 

[MWAVolfan]

Pod 1: OK, Mizzou. UM, MSU
Pod 2: Texas, TAMU, LSU. ARK
Pod 3: UT, UK, Vandy, BAMA
Pod 4: UF, GA, USC, BARN

OR

Pod 1: OK, Mizzou. UM, MSU
Pod 2: Texas, TAMU, LSU. ARK
Pod 3: UT, UK, GA, VANDY
Pod 4: UF, USC, BAMA, BARN

OR

Pod 1: OK, Mizzou. ARK, VANDY
Pod 2: Texas, TAMU, LSU. MSU
Pod 3: UT, UK, GA, USC
Pod 4: UF, OLE MISS, BAMA, BARN

OR

Pod 1: Texas, TAMU, OK, ARK
Pod 2: LSU, Ole Miss, MSU, Bama
Pod 3: UT, UK, Mizzou, Vandy
Pod 4: UF, GA, USC, Barn

 

[DawgInterloper]

I see lots of comments favoring eight team divisions and a 9 game schedule. IMO, the disadvantage of that is that it doesn't do enough to fix the long gap between games vs members of the other division. Given the east west split people have proposed, it would feel like an occasional Big 12 vs SEC challenge match with a playoff game at the end

My choices would be either

1. Four 4 team pods, 9 game schedule and no fixed cross pod opponents. That way you'd face each member of the other pods every other season on average, and teams will have at least one or two traditional annual rivalry games within their pod.

2. Drop all divisions and go to a rotation of the entire conference with some kind of strength of schedule weighting. Teams would face a very different conference schedule every season, but would face every SEC member more than once every two years on average.

 

[volbound1700]

Posted this in another thread:

Here is the way I see things going down and if so, SEC would end up great and probably be in better spot than we are now (not just money but general setup and schedules):

If they split the divisions in East and West, there won't be any cross-division games in my opinion.

Here is the best split for two divisions:

East: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt

West: Arkansas, LSU, Missouri, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Texas, and Texas A&M

You do 7 division games and 2 interdivision games. With the 2 interdivision game, each team will play a team from the other division once every four years as long as their isn't any permanent cross over games.

The only rivalries that are possibly loss in this scenario with any value are Alabama-LSU, Alabama-Miss State, Ole Miss-Vanderbilt. None of these rivalries outside of Alabama vs. LSU mean that much and Alabama vs. LSU is really more of a recent rivalry so you really do not lose much by losing these games.

Meanwhile you restore rivalries like Auburn and Tennessee. This scenario just works in so many ways. Although LSU will miss Alabama, I think they will fine Oklahoma and Texas to be even more intriguing of a matchup. Oklahoma vs. Arkansas also has the potential to be a fun series. Texas gets its rivalries back with A&M and Arkansas. Oklahoma gets to play Missouri again. It has the best wins.

Also emphasis my previous statement that each SEC school would play all of the schools from the other division once every four years if allowed two interdivision games that rotate every year.

 

[DawgInterloper]

Pod 1: OK, Mizzou. UM, MSU
Pod 2: Texas, TAMU, LSU. ARK
Pod 3: UT, UK, Vandy, BAMA
Pod 4: UF, GA, USC, BARN

OR


Pod 1: OK, Mizzou. UM, MSU
Pod 2: Texas, TAMU, LSU. ARK
Pod 3: UT, UK, GA, VANDY
Pod 4: UF, USC, BAMA, BARN

Just a guess, but I don't think TAMU wants to be in a pod with Texas. If that's the case, the SEC will probably make an effort to avoid that scenario.

 

[MWAVolfan]

I see lots of comments favoring eight team divisions and a 9 game schedule. IMO, the disadvantage of that is that it doesn't do enough to fix the long gap between games vs members of the other division. Given the east west split people have proposed, it would feel like an occasional Big 12 vs SEC challenge match with a playoff game at the end

My choices would be either

1. Four 4 team pods, 9 game schedule and no fixed cross pod opponents. That way you'd face each member of the other pods every other season on average, and teams can preserve one or two big annual rivalry games.

2. Drop all divisions and go to a rotation of the entire conference with some kind of strength of schedule weighting. Teams would face a very different conference schedule every season, but would face every SEC member more than once every two years on average.

I think the days of the annual rivalry will be gone. Too many matchups to accommodate when you have to play 15 other teams in as short a period as possible.
IMO, go to 10 conference games and only two cupcake OOC games. Then you can cycle through the teams faster.

 

[RhodesVol]

The more I read, the more this all signifies the beginning of the end of college football as we know it. Now, I don't want to be some prophet of doom and gloom, but you already have talking heads on ESPN saying that the ACC should reach out to the SEC about merging. Otherwise, they will get left behind when the super conference forms, etc.

This is trending towards 20-24 team conferences, and to be honest, college football will lose the regional charm that it has been built around since the beginning.
With the advent of the NIL, and the evolution of the one time transfer rule, there are so many changes happening so quickly that college football is rapidly becoming the NFL-lite, which to me is just lackluster. Oh well, I'll continue to watch Tennessee play, but I am afraid that the inherent character of college sports will very soon be unrecognizable.

 

[DawgInterloper]

I think the days of the annual rivalry will be gone. Too many matchups to accommodate when you have to play 15 other teams in as short a period as possible.
IMO, go to 10 conference games and only two cupcake OOC games. Then you can cycle through the teams faster.

Ten game conference schedule with no fixed cross division rival would be okay with me, at least better than what we have now. I'd actually like a full rotation of all 16 teams, no divisions, with 10 games per year, but it's probably a long shot. Playing each SEC team 10 years out of 15 seems like more than enough to sustain the existing rivalries and build some new ones, but some won't agree.

 

[IluvdoubleD's]

First off, Nobody is canceling Texas vs Ok or, UT vs Alabama. Why would you when they can be saved? UT and OK will be in the east, or north (what ever you like), and Alabama and Texas will be in the west, or south (what ever you like) imo. It sets up UT for alternating Alabama and Texas cycles. Even Disney has to see the beauty of that.

 

[99gator]

Don’t like the pod idea. The question I have is are they done at 16?

 

[MWAVolfan]

Don’t like the pod idea. The question I have is are they done at 16?

I dont think so. I posted in another thread about the SEC merging with the ACC and the Big10 merging with the Pac12.

Jay Bilas is also openly talking about the SEC/ACC merger.

I see two 32 team conferences who each have their own 4 or 6 team playoff and the winners play a national championship game.

 

[bamawriter]

I dont think so. I posted in another thread about the SEC merging with the ACC and the Big10 merging with the Pac12.

Jay Bilas is also openly talking about the SEC/ACC merger.

I see two 32 team conferences who each have their own 4 or 6 team playoff and the winners play a national championship game.

I don't see those mergers happening. I think the four remaining conferences will stand pat for a bit. The ACC and Pac 12 will pick over the bones of the Big XII, and Notre Dame will join the ACC for real.