re: Schedule thread...enter at own risk.

They had better leave the rivalry games alone. The old SEC as it used to be is almost unrecognizable, and every time they sell a piece of tradition for a dollar this conference gets worse and worse. Give me AU and UT every year or frick else, this league is going in the shitter.

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I don't understand why the roommate switch proposal seems to be getting so little traction. It would be very easy to implement, it would preserve the most important rivalries, it would balance the schedules, and it would allow a full home and away rotation through every opponent in the SEC in only four years while playing only 8 conference games per year.

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If by the roommate switch you mean switching AU & Mizzou, then it would be destroying both the Iron Bowl (which is the biggest rivalry game in the SEC) and the TSIO. But besides that, the biggest reason it won't happen is because most of the other teams want to keep the status quo. Bama, UT, OM, Vandy, MSU, & UK all want to keep Auburn in the west so that they all get to keep their cross-divisional games. And I'm also not sure that Mizzou would want to move considering they border states of 3 of eastern teams and have a cross-divisional game with another. If they go to the west then they will only be bordering 1 state.

And that goes to the more realistic debate of why the cross-divisional game will stay as is. UF, Bama, UT, AU, UGA, Mizzou, Arky, OM, Vandy, MSU & UK all want to keep their cross-divisional games as is. LSU, USCe, and A&M are the only ones that want to do away with it. It is as simple as pure politics. The nays just don't have the votes.

Only rivalries played more than 100 times...

117 Auburn Tigers - Georgia Bulldogs
110 Ole Miss Rebels - Mississippi State Bulldogs
109 Tennessee Volunteers - Kentucky Wildcats
107 Tennessee Volunteers - Vanderbilt Commodores
102 LSU- Ole Miss

TSIO - 95
TWLOCP - 92
Iron Bowl - 78

That being said, I have no idea why everyone doesn't want to go to 9 games , 2 rotating but not home and home, 1 permanent, that way you play divisional teams & rivalry 4 times and cross divisional teams 1 time in 3 years

The only teams that this really affects are

UGA - GT
UF - FSU
USC - CU
UK - UL

But they are going to play those games, if we go to 11 conf games.

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no, they are not roommates

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My bad. I think I've seen that before now that you mention it. In theory is looks ok and could work, but it would be kind of confusing for a lot of fans to keep up with every year. But I'd be ok with it (although the matchups may need to be tweeked a little).

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1) lack of fairness: the games will be home games for someone and having more or less home games on your conference schedule unfairly affects your conference standing

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False and incredibly stupid. You will have 3 home and 3 away division games. 1 home and 1 away non-permanent cross division, and then your permanent game will be home or away for everyone in the division. LSU will have the same number of home games as Alabama and Texas A&M, every single year, swamp kitten.

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2) it is ineffective. it does not accomplish the goal of a round robin or rotating through the schedule rapidly enough. we don't have a 12 team league and didn't play a round robin when we did. If we did then there would be more arbitrary tie breakers and co-championships anyway (but no need for a conference championship game)

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So a 9 game is more inneffective than an 8 game? Everything you mentioned gets alleviated the more games you have....

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3) it makes the sport of college football worse. a consequence of this will be fewer major and interesting games played between major teams out of conference - those games between LSU/Oregon, Bama/PSU, Florida/FSU, UGA/Boise, etc are the spice of a college season.

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It makes the sport of college football better. Better conference games.

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4) it lowers home gates. with fewer home games comes lesser income

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It's just as easy to say that the more cupcake games you have, the more you're driving away attendance. People prefer quality not quantity, and even places with supposedly loyal fans, like LSU, aren't showing up to games.

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5) it punishes middle and lower tier teams. Fewer of those teams will be able to get bowl eligible and get the extra practice between regular season and bowl season which helps them improve.

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Bowl eligibility and the middle tier teams middling for success in whatever bowls the Mississippi teams go to has no effect whatsoever.

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False and incredibly stupid. You will have 3 home and 3 away division games. 1 home and 1 away non-permanent cross division, and then your permanent game will be home or away for everyone in the division. LSU will have the same number of home games as Alabama and Texas A&M, every single year, swamp kitten.

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Unless the only games that count are games within the division I don't understand your statement. The issue is one of fairness. If you play fewer home games in your conference schedule than you are at a competitive disadvantage.

ETA: I see your proposal is division specific. That lessens the unfairness within the division but lowers the chances of every team within the division of running the table. I just don't like it because I think teams have a tendency to grow with a favorable schedule (e.g. Auburn 2013) and sometimes collapse with the wrong schedule (e.g. Florida 2013). If you are a team with a strong opposite division opponent and tack on 1-2 more strong opposite division opponents your schedule is dramatically different some years from a team with a particularly weak draw from the opposite division.

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) it is ineffective. it does not accomplish the goal of a round robin or rotating through the schedule rapidly enough. we don't have a 12 team league and didn't play a round robin when we did. If we did then there would be more arbitrary tie breakers and co-championships anyway (but no need for a conference championship game)


So a 9 game is more inneffective than an 8 game? Everything you mentioned gets alleviated the more games you have

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it is less effective than another plausible solution (the roommate switch proposal).

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it makes the sport of college football worse. a consequence of this will be fewer major and interesting games played between major teams out of conference - those games between LSU/Oregon, Bama/PSU, Florida/FSU, UGA/Boise, etc are the spice of a college season.


It makes the sport of college football better. Better conference games.

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completely 100% disagree. There is tons more value in one more game for a major team between another major team in another conference than there is in one more game within the conference. For the great teams it is a national game of interest when you play a major program from another conference. A 9th conference game generates nowhere near the same buzz. The same really goes for the bad SEC teams. Their fans are unlikely to be interested in playing another conference game (against an out of division opponent who is generally not a rival and who they generally have no chance of beating). The fan reaction is generally "yah, another random SEC is going to rape us".

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It's just as easy to say that the more cupcake games you have, the more you're driving away attendance

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The gates for home games are what is at issue here. When you play fewer home games because of a 9 game conference schedule (which by definition means 0.5 fewer home games every year) then you make less money. It also increases the likelihood you will never get to see great out of conference teams come to your home stadium because they will simply not be scheduled with a burdensome SEC schedule.

It used to be that SEC teams played 5-6 conference games per year but 2-3 major teams from other conferences. That was just more interesting for the fans and gave them a better value for their season tickets.

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Bowl eligibility and the middle tier teams middling for success in whatever bowls the Mississippi teams go to has no effect whatsoever.

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that's just dumb. With an increasing slate of conference games you will see fewer of the teams struggling for bowl eligibility get bowl eligible - and those programs will suffer competitively as a result.

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It makes the sport of college football better. Better conference games.

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I disagree. No offense, but I'd rather play Clemson than 4/7 teams in the SEC West. Clemson, Alabama, and LSU have about the same appeal to me as a UGA fan, actually (AU being the West team we need to play). We actually have a history with Clemson.

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I disagree. No offense, but I'd rather play Clemson than 4/7 teams in the SEC West. Clemson, Alabama, and LSU have about the same appeal to me as a UGA fan, actually (AU being the West team we need to play). We actually have a history with Clemson.

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Nothing is preventing you from playing Clemson, and this isn't just about Georgia. More regular season matchups(twice as many) of Florida/Bama, LSU/UT, Auburn/Florida, A&M/UT, etc. are exciting and compelling matchups.

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Nine game schedule only reduces the number of home games if you schedule away non conference games the same year that you have 5 away conference games.
3 home non con games, 5 away conference games, 4 home conference games = 7 home games, which is what most SEC programs are doing these days.
The next year you would have 5 home conference games, 4 away conference games, meaning you can schedule an away conference game and two home games and still have 7 home games.

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Its a good thing schedules are set way in advance to mitigate these types of issues. That is part of the reason why having the bicentennial celebration of bridge scheduling is so ridiculous.

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Preventing, no. Making it totally impractical, yes. This is a totally different issue for teams with an OOC rival, especially for UGA and UF who have another neutral site conference game.

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What Georgia fans need to realize is that the conference that it cashes checks from is not interested in catering to its desire to enrich a nonconference member. That's why no one cares about you playing Tech, from non-UGA fans, the other conference members, the ADs, the coaches, and the commissioner all don't care about that.