Generally speaking there seems to be 2 main concerns, fairness and rivalries. Objectively speaking, Gator fans complaining about fairness is a little silly. Before I get roasted, because in 24 years of BCS/CFP, 14 SEC teams have won the title, 10 West, 4 East. ANY West team has a better complaint that the SEC is unbalanced. Gator: "But we have to play LSU every year" Entire West: "No shit, so do we." I would argue fairness is unachievable, but worth making an honest effort towards. IMO, only a completely random rotating schedule would be the closest thing you can get to fair. To dig my hole deeper, I will say I'm not as concerned about rivalries as much as probably most fans are. Give me good matchups. Utah was the best game of the season (again IMO) and it has absolutely nothing to do with rivalries. Why is UF v UT a rivalry more than UF v USCe? Because the games (historically speaking) have been more significant and closely contested. I would bet a decade from now if UF played Auburn every year in a new pod system, no one would really give a shit that USCe isn't on our schedule every year. So, put me down in the category of a rotating schedule. If by the suggested pod system or by no divisions at all.
With this many teams in the conference, I like the idea of expanding the amount of conference games to 9, and giving every team 3 locked opponents every season. The issue with a system involving "locked opponents" is that some will obviously get the short end of the stick with tougher schedules. 10 conference games is fun, but it's a little too much in my opinion. Teams get almost no flexibility in nonconference opponents. If we go the locked opponents route, I'd honestly think this is a good opportunity to replace LSU with Auburn as a permanent opponent. LSU is a consistently much better program, but Auburn makes about 10x more geographic sense to play every year than LSU. And with that many rotating conference games, we'd still see LSU plenty, I'm sure.
A few comments on the above: Between LSU and UGA - both of those teams are generally in the top 2 of their division - at worst top 3. Given your statement - Tenn has (usually) the best team from the West every year. And they just lost 15 in a row. So arguably they could complain more. Not sure anyone else can. Florida-Auburn was a very legitimate rivalry (I believe the 3rd oldest in the conference until we had to give it up in 2002). If you asked Gators of my age (graduated in 1995) I suspect most would say it’s just slightly less than the UGA rivalry. Personally I would much rather play them every year than LSU. We were stuck with LSU because UGA-Aub is the oldest rivalry in the conference (1892)
Another possible option is 9 conference games, pods, with one permanent non-pod rival. If I miss any rivalries people would care about please let me know. Pod 1: 1. Florida 2. Georgia 3. South Carolina 4. Auburn Pod 2: 1. Alabama 2. LSU 3. Tennessee 4. Vanderbilt Pod 3: 1. Ole Miss 2. Mississippi State 3. Kentucky 4. Arkansas Pod 4: 1. Texas 2. Oklahoma 3. Texas A&M 4. Missouri Permanent rivalries: 1. Alabama-Auburn 2. LSU-Arkansas 3. Florida-Tennessee 4. South Carolina-Missouri 5. Kentucky-Vanderbilt 6. Texas A&M-Mississippi State 7. Texas-Ole Miss 8. Oklahoma-Georgia Some of these don't really matter, but if we have a rule with one permanent game, you have to be consistent. If this is the system, almost half of every team's conference games would be predetermined, but at least the vast majority of popular rivalries are preserved, IMO.
It's always a balancing act between tradition and fairness. I'd personally rather see the games with bad blood so for purposes of college football, I prefer tradition to fairness, but to each their own.
Could you imagine how much fans would complain (legitimately) about USCe playing Mizz every year when the rest of the pod gets: Tennessee, Oklahoma, Alabama respectively, a thread a day for eternity. I get history, and have every respect for it. Learn it or doomed to repeat it and all that. But, if FSU closed down their program and UF swapped them out for a yearly Ohio State matchup. After a couple of years of top 10 battles, it would be one of the best rivalries in college football. Every rivalry has to start somewhere, I'm all for changing things up.
Lucky shouldn’t decide champions, it’s freaking lame. Decide on the field. If you lose on the field by bad luck , oh well, but not because of completely lopsided schedules.
I like it except pod 3 is absolutely trash. No titles in the division? You need at least one dominant team in each pod.
From lopsided schedules are not fair, to they are fair if your in the same pod, to the pods themselves are not fair, in 3 consecutive posts. I have to ask what you think is the correct course of action?
Cared more about preserving the big games than fairness, there's no way you can exercise both perfectly. But I agree with you, pod 3 isn't great historically.
IMHO UF will get something like, Dolphins, Chiefs, Texas, Oklahoma, Bills, L$U All away UGA Jacksonville, F$U Bama, UGA get Vandy, USCe, Mizzo, AU All Home.
The pods are an unnecessary destruction of SEC rivalries and traditions. Now they want us to have only 3 permanent rivals?
Unless we add more conference games to the schedule, it will be unfair for some who happen to get a schedule full of top SEC teams. They could be the 2nd best but have the 4th best record because their SoS is far better than the teams ahead of them. I don't know if the SEC will require a 10 game schedule with 2 OOC games, but even so, every team will not play a third of the conference possible slate (instead of 15 games, you are playing just 10). At least with 2 divisions, you split the conference in half allowing some variation. It's also physiological. We have a chance to finish 3rd in the East but if we had one division, we would finish 6th right now. The problem is in everyone's mind are 2 East teams at the top followed by 3 equally good teams from the West. It will take a long time to get that out of fan's heads. Like others have said if our 3 locked teams were Alabama, LSU, and Georgia, that would suck. Or in our case, Georgia, Tennessee and LSU. Georgia Tennessee LSU Alabama Ole Miss Florida Miss St South Carolina Arkansas Missouri Auburn Vandy Texas A&M
We went from 4 to 3 with the recent expansion losing UF-Auburn. Pods will keep the 3 current rivalries.
The SEC is too big and that formulation is nuts. Keep the Divisional winners playing. I wouldn't mind seeing Conference Championship games between divisional winners be integrated into an expanded BCS playoff where teams are seeded. With 12 divisional winners, four teams get a bye. New game every week. Championship on New Years.
This is the fallout from slowly adding too many teams to the SEC over the years. There is no good way to schedule all of this. I used to say that I considered it a good season if we either won the SEC or beat fsu. Now, it's so hard to win the SEC with all these teams competing, I'm not sure fans can tread water holding out hope for that every year. I mean, how many different teams have won the SEC over the last 25 years? Five maybe with Alabama taking more than a third of them? That leaves all the rest of the programs perpetually disappointed. I don't think these super conferences are a good thing, but, I also know they're not going away. I don't think a conference should include more teams than you could play in a season. So, I guess let's beat fsu, but celebrate like hell on the rare occasion that we can pull out an SEC championship in this environment.
