re: What about next year..

If it was a regular schedule with divisions, it would be a lot easier. The problem is that the SEC office clearly prioritized a bunch of marquee matchups for its standard bearer, Alabama, and its recent darling, Georgia. Those two teams have brutal schedules.

Meanwhile they want to ensure a smooth onboarding process for new breadwinner Texas, so they gave them one ranked conference game outside of their required tie with Oklahoma.

Byrne also did DeBoer no favors because moving forward Alabama will have two major out of conference opponents every season, the only team in America doing that.