re: Bowen Loftin (Fmr A&M and Mizzou Pres)-Adding Texas would break the Gentleman's Agreement

Maybe but in that scenario they’re in your pod as is Oklahoma which doesn’t seem fair.

You haven’t played them in 10 years, why does it have to be annual now?

We share a conference with them, we should absolutely be playing them every year. I was never opposed before, I just didn’t like the idea of trading fun home and home games like UCLA and Clemson for it. And we seemed dead set on having one P5 opponent for a while at least under Sumlin/Hyman and Woodward

It doesn’t really, but if the league wants to maximize the value that is the call.

Mike Slive probably did say that. Greg Sankey wants to define his legacy. shite changes. O well.

Yeah, I haven’t had a ton of time to look into how the schedules work with the pods honestly. I’m guessing this is with 9 conference games (thinking about it in my head)? I would imagine 10 conference games is probably pushing it and would make this a logistical nightmare as well

My selfish condition for this is I’d like to play Texas LSU and Arkansas every year. Arkansas maybe less important than the other two, but those are the three schools we have history with. I guess that would be extremely difficult or impossible though without having an insane schedule

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I am kinda amazed LSU fans aren’t more upset about that.

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Well we do have a lot of hate spread around. We are keeping 2 of our 5 and don’t want to be in an over stacked pod.

Losing the Bama game every year is worse than I think most realize but they’ve beaten us so much recently I don’t think people can see it at the moment.

Losing Auburn and Florida also sucks but again you can’t keep them all, as long as we’re playing one of the two every year that’s not too bad.

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Losing the Bama game would seem to be a deal breaker

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I personally would be really upset about it but I think most here will see it as getting away from Saban and won’t realize what they’ve lost until maybe that 2nd or 3rd time they aren’t on the schedule.

Those kinds of games are what makes your school a great place for college football, both for players and fans. They’re will still be a lot of great matchups for us obviously but that’s a special game.

Delete

All trolling aside-

There's certainly going to be a gentlemen's agreement taking place.

One of the numbers I see tossed around, I don't know the deal if it's true or not: you need 11 of 14 yea votes to do something like this.

If A&M raises a stink (and they are), I see Arkansas backing them. You then have 2 Tigers in play...
Missouri will join in with anyone if it strengthens their conference bonds. They need a partner, this could be that. That gives you 3, technically could still pass.

But then you factor in LSU. You gotta figure LSU is kinda A&M's sponsor, and maybe Arky's too. You know that LSU did have to consent to those 2 being added, hell we ended up being paired with both during rivalry weeks.

So, I see LSU as the go-between, trying to broker a deal between the "traditional" SEC teams and A&M with this. I think ultimately, LSU will back A&M's call, but might be trying to get them to agree to it, on behalf of the rest of the league.

If that's the case, if A&M won't give in, you would likely see 4 nays minimum if it came to a vote. And the SEC won't have a vote unless it's a guaranteed pass.

This 4 team bloc makes a fair bit of sense, because the more the SEC adds, the more it gets diluted. If you put in 2 teams from the West, the split pushes "the real SEC" to the East, and LSU gets stuck in with a bunch of SWC and Big 8 relics (and the Mississippi schools). That might not be in LSU's best marketing interests.