re: Let's say Mizzou protest occurred the same year SEC considered expansion

This is how we fix the SEC:

We get rid of the Mississippi schools, Arkansas, and Missouri. We add North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, and Virginia Tech. Why? Demographics and population shifts. Adding these schools will ensure that we make a lot of money for decades to come.

After we lock down things from a TV set/demographics perspective, we can make a pure football move and add Oklahoma and Okie St. (or two other teams that are less nauseating).

Then we break the conference into pods of 4, kind of like how the NFC and AFC do it.

SEC EAST:
Georgia
Florida
South Carolina
Kentucky

SEC North:
North Carolina
Duke
Virginia
Virginia Tech

SEC Central:
Alabama
Auburn
Tennessee
Vanderbilt

SEC West:
LSU
Texas A&M
Oklahoma
Okie State

We play a ninth conference game and two permanent non-pod teams per year. It would be a 3-2-4 format. Three pod opponents, two permanent non-pod opponents, and four rotating teams. The four rotating teams would ensure that every school plays every other school at least once in a four year cycle. For example, Georgia would play Florida, South Carolina, and Kentucky every year (pod opponents) and would have permanent non-pod matchups with Auburn and Tennessee.

The winner of each pod at the end of the year would play in an SEC semifinal game. To do that, we would have to play one less regular season game (11 regular season games). Semifinal games would be in rotating locations. SEC East and SEC North would play their semifinal games in Charlotte, Washington DC, and Nashville. SEC Central and SEC West pods would play their semifinal games in Dallas, Houston, and New Orleans. The winner of the semifinal games would go on to play the SEC Championship game in Atlanta.

The winner of the SEC Championship game would get an automatic bid into the college football playoff as a top four seed. We would expand the college football playoff to have six teams, with the top two seeds getting byes. The top four seeds would be the champions of the four 16 team super conferences, and the 5 and 6 seeds would be at large bids.