re: How did the 12 SEC teams agree on these East & West permanent rivals for over a decade?

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Point was that scheduling itself was the wild west back in the early days, and was often done at the whims of the coaches involved.

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To add further perspective on this, by 1980, everyone was playing 6 conference games. But the conference wasn't dictating who those 6 teams were. If an AD decided that traveling to Starkville was too much of a hassle to travel to, well then State isn't on the schedule.

Before then, there were many years where the teams didn't even play the same number of conference games. Look at 1970 where LSU won the conference with a 5-0 conference record, Tennessee wlfinished 2nd at 4-1, and Auburn finished 3rd at 5-2.