re: if 16 are teams are inevitable

quote:

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Why would they break up into pods, more than likely they would just do away with cross divisional games and keep the current format

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Because if you do that, you are effectively two conferences, not one. A pod system, wherein the two divisions for round robin play (required by NCAA rules in order to stage a conference championship) are not fixed, but rotate, would allow everyone in the conference to play every other school home and away over a reasonable time period. You could still probably protect UT-Bama and UGA-Auburn if that was desired, without screwing things up too much, but, otherwise, you need to rotate so that there is a sense of cohesion and familiarity.