re: If you could realign the SEC divisions, how would you do it?

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LSU
Alabama
Auburn
Ole Miss
Mississippi St
Florida
Georgia
Tennessee
Vanderbilt
Kentucky

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This.

Honestly, I bet you could go through the entire country and set up 8 pretty decent 10-game conferences full of traditional rivalries, have them all play 12-game schedules (9 in-conference, two against other major conference teams, and one FCS school), then have a 16-team playoff (top 2 from each league) to determine a legit NC.

The 40 or so teams that didn't end up in one of the 8 leagues can join the FCS.

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2. If we must have divisions, the 4 schools who insist on screwing up the schedules by having to play each other every year, Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, and Georgia, MUST be in the same division.

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We could just abandon geography and do something like

Division 1:
LSU (perm - Ala)
Florida (perm - UGA)
A&M (perm - Auburn)
Arkansas (perm - Tenn)
Missouri (perm - USC)
Ole Miss (perm - Vandy)
MSU (perm - Kentucky)

Division 2:
Alabama
Auburn
Georgia
Tennessee
Vanderbilt
Kentucky
South Carolina

I expect Florida fans would nix this - owing to their lack of success against Mississippi schools

The Roommate Switch

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The Roommate Switch

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Really is the only mostly acceptable solution.

I would use the 3-4-4-3 pod system also. Mine would be:

West:
Texas A&M
LSU
Arkansas

Upper:
Missouri
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Tennessee

Lower:
Ole Miss
Miss St.
Alabama
Auburn

East:
South Carolina
Georgia
Florida

One year the divisions would be Lower-East and Upper-West. Then the next year the divisions would be Upper-East and Lower-West. There would be 8 games a year. 6 games in your division and 2 others.

In the Upper and Lower pods, All schools would have 3 permanent rivals. 2 of them would have one from each of the other pods. Because East and West only have 3 teams, another school would have 2 rivals from the other 4 school pod and a rival from the East. The last school would be the same as the previous school except have its rival from the West.

In the East and West pods, the schools would have only 2 rivals: one from the Upper pod and one from the Lower pod. The East and West pod schools would rotate between each school in the other 3 school pod each year.

To me this is a better system than would we got now. The schools in the Upper and Lower pods play every body every 2 years. The schools in the East and West pods play every school in the Upper and Lower pods every 2 years and play every school in the remaining pod every 3 years.

Plus we can preserve all the permanent rivals we have now.

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West LSU Alabama Auburn Ole Miss Mississippi St
East Florida Georgia Tennessee Vanderbilt Kentucky

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geauxnavybeatbama

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I like this guy. He gets it.

Move Auburn to ACC and add Oklahoma State.

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The Roommate Switch

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I did not read thge link before I sent my reply I thought it was a joke link.

Now that I have read the link, I see that the author came up with some very similar if not better than the one that I came up with.

There is several advantages that his system has over mine. One is that it is a simpler system than mine. Two is that every school plays every other school every two years.

However, his system has a fundamental flaw. The schools is the small pods get to keep their rivals while the schools is the large pods do not.

In his system, Arkansas does not play Texas A&M every year. Also Arkansas does not play LSU every year and Vanderbilt does not play Tennessee every year. These are just 3 games that I found at first glance. There could be others as well.

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Flip teams around in their format:

East
Ga. (Au.)/Fl. (LSU)/Tn. (Ala.)

South
Au. (Ga.)/LSU (Fl.)/Ala. (Tn.)

North
SC/Ky./Vandy/Mizz.

West
Ark./TA&M/Miss./MSU

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I did not understand this reply because I did not click on the link before.

Moving which schools that are in the smaller pods does not solve the problem. In your system, Texas A&M does not play LSU every year and Tennessee does not play Vanderbilt every year. Missouri does not play Arkansas every year. There could be others as well.

Southwest Division: A&M, Mizzou, Arkansas, Oklahoma
Delta Division: LSU, Old Miss, Auburn, Vanderbilt
Central Division: Alabama, Tennessee, MSU, Kentucky
Eastern Division: Florida, UGA, S. Carolina, Virginia Tech

9 game schedule (3 division games, 2 from each other division)
Every 4 years you'll play a home and away with every member of the conference.

4 team playoff.

It looks good for LSU right now with Auburn down and Ole Miss about to be nit by the NCAA, but over the long run these divisions should be roughly equal in strength. The eastern division might be a bit on the tough side...

While there are no fixed out of division opponents, you will still see every team every other year which should be enough to keep the rivalries intact.

Sets of divisional opponents should be encouraged to schedule a neutral site game to ensure every team has the same number of home games (such as UGA-UF).