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

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I’m assuming you are young

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Whilst I was not alive between 1906 and 1947 ( ), I was not inferring that either Auburn or Alabama was doing it for some sort of advantage — simply the way the post was worded.

Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different answer as to why the game wasn't actually scheduled/played by either team.

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.

Our past history with Ole Miss and LSU was mostly forgotten by the time we joined the SEC. We hadn't played LSU since 1966 and Ole Miss wasn't much of a threat after that series was resumed in the early 80's.

Tennessee was the only SEC-e border state and it just made sense that we'd play them. As mentioned, we played SC because we were both new.

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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.

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I’ll give you that the 1998 team was probably one of the worst to ever win the west

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Probably? They finished 8-5.

I can answer the MSU part

South Carolina was new and just randomly paired with MSU and they kept the newbies together.

Alabama had Tennessee, Auburn had Georgia and Florida, LSU wanted Florida

It was either Vanderbilt or Kentucky for MSU. Keep in mind, when these schedules were originally set, State was a top 25 club (They swept Texas in a home and home the first two years).

If you look at the '91 standings, the last of the 10-team SEC, State tied with Georgia for fourth and Kentucky went 0-7.

I won't argue that '98 State was one of the two worst SEC Championship participants ('95 Arkansas was terrible as well, but I think they had help via probation). But the West was awful that year. Four teams in the East would have won the West.

But unlike the '95 Hogs, State put up a fight in the actual championship game, and led midway through the fourth quarter.

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but oddly enough, LSU and Florida have been playing every year since the since 1971 and every year from 1953-1967. Never could figure out exactly how that came to be with how far they are from one another.

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I always assumed it was because of the Gulf Coast. Fun fact, LSU is the closest SEC school to every town on the Gulf, until you get to around Pensacola, maybe further. The Mississippi and Alabama schools were further North. For LSU, you just hop on I-10 and roll West (or East, if you're in East Texas).

Someone probably pointed this out but Auburn has always had the hardest schedule. In the 80’s before the division split, 4 out of the 5 annual games were Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee.