Can somebody explain to me the 1972 Season?

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And I was only 2 when this happened, so I did not have the luxary of living through it. Any insight would be helpful.

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You lived through it. Enjoy the insight.

How do you think Bear Bryant won so many SECC? He scheduled an extra SEC game every year. Pretty damn smart if you ask me.

I can't really help you. I just want to add that I think the same thing happened with UGA one year when they only played like 5 SEC games. No one really knows too much about this stuff though. A few weeks ago I asked why LSU went decades without playing UGA, Vandy or Auburn and no one really knew a good answer except that the SEC was just different back then.

Already said it, Bear Bryant added Vandy on most years to gain a one game advantage over the other SEC teams.

Because the SEC office is in BHam.

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inb4SECofficeisinBham

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dammit 3 minutes late

Auburn played 4 OOC games that year while alabama played 3.

The only reason I can see for this is that AU played GaTech that year, which had previously been a conference game but was no longer one since they left the conference.

Doesnt make a lot of sense that they wouldnt have just made GaTech one of their 3 ooc games and just scheduled another sec team in its place but for whatever reason, they didnt do it this way.

Would be interested in knowing why it was done this way to be honest. There may be an interesting story behind it. Lord knows just about everything in the history of the SEC has a CSB behind it.

The SEC had really unbalanced schedules until 1978. You are correct in Alabama 7-1 and Auburn 6-1 with Auburn winning the 17-16. game. But that wasn't uncommon. Tennessee won the SEC in 1969 with a 5-1 mark while LSU was 4-1. Both teams lost to Ole Miss. Tennessee was blown out 38-0 and LSU lost 26-23. After Tulane's departure in '65 there had been an attempt to make sure teams had 6 "conference games" so there were some 'designated' conference games. For instance, Vanderbilt's and LSU's games vs Tulane were counted as an "SEC" game and State's vs Texas Tech was as well in 1968. That practice ended in '69.

Now, I really don't know the "why" anymore than the odd scheduling with member schools. LSU and Auburn met in 1969 for the first time since the 40's. Miss State and Georgia Tech never played as SEC opponents. Oddly enough, starting in 1972 teams did start a "rotation" of sorts where they had 5 fixed or permanent opponents and at least one opponent to play home and home for two years and then continue the process until that was completed.

For instance, Auburn played LSU in 1972 and 1973,Kentucky in 1974 and 1975, Ole Miss in 1976 and 1977 and Vanderbilt in 1979 and 1979 and the process started again with LSU in 1980.(Auburn and Ole Miss did play in '72 and '73 in addition to this format --for the first time since 1953).

Alabama and Ole Miss met each other in 1980 and 1981 but those games were not counted as SEC games.

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What's even crazier is instead of given 8 SEC teams to play, we had to play #17 Florida State instead of a team like Vandy that Alabama had to play.

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I thought this was common knowledge. Bama did this for years. It definitely helped tilt the record books in their favor to a degree.