quote:
The SEC is smart enough to know that the permanent rivals should be of a historic nature. Otherwise, if it was about the last 10 years, what in the world would Tennessee be doing on the list? The SEC also gets that it's about the balance of power in scheduling.

The Saban Bowl is when this LSU rivalry took off. Which makes it about as Johnny come lately as it gets.

The SEC, from what I gathered, used 3 metrics:

1) Maintaining all Traditional rival games
2) Competitive balance in the schedule
3) Geography

Using the last 10 years (OU and Texas Big12 schedule), the top 4 teams were Bama, UGA, OU and LSU, in that order and the next 4 (not sure of order) were Florida, Texas, Auburn and Aggie.

TENN is in the 2nd tier and I think ranked around 12th. Vandy of course is 16th.

So Bama gets Auburn and TENN, which is for all Bama supporters, clear rival games and vice versa for TENN/Auburn fans.

LSU thus is the game that fits the competitive balance metric giving Bama 2 top 8 teams and 1 2nd 8 team.

LSU gets Bama and Aggie as their top 8 teams and gets Ole Miss, which is the team we have played 2nd most (111 times. Miss. State is in fact the team LSU has played the most at 117 times. So if it was purely historic nature as you suggest, then LSU's top 2 played teams among the charter SEC members are Miss. State and Ole Miss. So I don't think LSU fans would have minded keeping those 2 as our permanent and I guess the A&M game which would have been 3 of the 4 closest campuses in terms of geography as well (Bama is actually the 3rd closest campus, Aggie 4th)

Bama at 87 and FLorida at 69 are 3rd and 4th for LSU. So had LSU gotten Florida as its 2nd top 8 rather than Bama, then you all would have gotten OU. Florida get UGA and OU. So that is a case when competitive balance > geography.

Bama: TENN/Auburn
UGA: Florida/Auburn
Auburn: Bama/UGA
Texas: Aggie/OU
Aggie: LSU/Texas
LSU: Aggie/Bama
Florida: UGA and OU
OU: Texas and Florida

The OU/Florida series was to again ensure the competitive balance of all top 8 playing 2 other top 8. Thus, the bottom 8 all play 2 among the other 2nd tier 8.

And while I do agree that LSU and Bama is not a rival in the "historic sense across all metrics used to define a rival game", it has been based on TV ratings the most watched game over the last 10 years. So now that ESPN is the sole broadcast partner of SEC ball, I think they went to the league office and said the LSU/Bama game is one they want in their inventory. Just my guess.