One detail from the last round of conference realignment that I don’t think many people remember is the fact that the SEC didn’t set a new scheduling rotation until two years in. The 2012 and 2013 football schedules were ad hoc affairs, put together to buy them time to work out the new format. It wasn’t until 2014 that the actual rotation came into being, which also changed up the cross-division rivalries to break apart Missouri-Texas A&M and create the Arkansas-Mizzou and South Carolina-Texas A&M series.
Don’t expect a quick answer to what the 16-team schedule will end up being, in other words. There are a lot of stakeholders with big, swinging whistles around their necks who will advocate vociferously for what they think is in their schools’ best interests.
I did a quick overview of scheduling options a couple weeks ago, but I want to focus in on what I think the most likely format will be: pods.
Pods come in two main genres, eight-game schedules and nine-game schedules, so even just saying “pods” isn’t as specific as I think you’d like. Either way, the way to think about pods is less that there will be four pods of four but rather that there will be two eight-team divisions where the members change annually. No matter the setup, every year there will be two pairs of pods where everyone plays everyone else. Those pairings will be the divisions for that year, and the SEC Championship Game participants will each come from one of those pairings.
The nine-game format is the simpler one, so let’s tackle that one first. For the sake of convenience, I will use the pods proposed by the SEC Network a while ago. If that link doesn’t work for you, here is what they came up with:
Pod A: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina
Pod B: Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Pod C: LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Texas A&M
Pod D: Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas
There are myriad ways to set up the rotations here, but one thing remains constant: each year a pod will play all of another pod and half of a third. For example, Pod A might play everyone in Pod B and half of Pod C.
The nine-game setup I think is most likely is one in which Pods A and B and Pods C and D always play half of the other. The schema above makes the long-running Georgia-Auburn series no longer be annual, but if A and B always play half of each other, then it’s guaranteed to happen twice every four years.
Not locking those together probably means complete home-and-homes only happen every six years. The same issue arises for the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry; locking Pods C and D also ensures that series completes every four years instead of six. The upshot is that Pods A and B, as well as C and D, will never be in the same yearly division. It’s up to you whether you care about that fact.
The temporary divisions would work like this in the rotation:
Years 1-2
Divison A: Pods A and C
Divison B: Pods B and D
Years 3-4
Division A: Pods A and D
Division B: Pods B and C
Florida always plays the other Pod A teams of Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. In Years 1-2, the Gators would complete home-and-homes with LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and Texas A&M from Pod C along with, say, Alabama and Vandy from Pod B. Then in Years 3-4, they’d complete home-and-homes with Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas from Pod D along with Auburn and Tennessee from Pod B.
That’s the most reasonable nine-game schedule. Now, let’s look at eight games.
This being the SEC, the goal is to preserve as many of the top rivalries as possible. That means seven games will be against the other three teams in your pod, the four from another pod to create one of the “divisions” for that year, plus a designated rival from another pod.
The first step to building this is to divide the conference into two halves. The partition that makes the most sense is basically using the divisions that everyone proposed should the conference go with them instead of pods. They also happen to line up with Pods A and B and Pods C and D as laid out by the SEC Network above.
Eastern half: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Western half: Arkansas, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M
The eastern half series that are most important to preserve are the Iron Bowl, Cocktail Party, UGA-AU, Bama-Tennessee, Florida-Tennessee, and Tennessee-Vandy. Let’s see if we can get them all together.
The easiest way is to take the Pods A and B that the SECN used. Two sets of designated rivals are obvious, Florida and Tennessee along with Georgia and Auburn.
No one will be happy about Alabama getting either Kentucky or South Carolina as its designated rival; it’s another plot to prop up the Tide, Paaaaaawl. I’ll give them UK to create the Bear Bryant Bowl but it really doesn’t matter. The other designated rivals then become Alabama-Kentucky and South Carolina-Vanderbilt.
In the other half, the series that matter most are Red River, the Egg Bowl, and Texas vs. A&M, with a lot of nice-to-have matchups like the Magnolia Bowl (LSU-Ole Miss), the Battle for the Golden Boot (LSU-Arkansas), the SEC’s newly manufactured Battle Line Rivalry (Arkansas-Missouri), and the actually pretty juicy new series of LSU-A&M along with old conference series like Oklahoma-Mizzou, OU-A&M, and Arkansas-Texas.
Using the SECN’s pods again, you can get every one of those series I just mentioned except for Oklahoma-Texas A&M to be annual, and that’s fine since there aren’t many memorable Aggies-Sooners matchups other than 77-0. The required series are LSU-Arkansas and Texas A&M-Texas, and then you can take your pick for how Oklahoma and Missouri line up with the Mississippi schools. It’s just like in the eastern half where two series are meaningful, two aren’t, and one power gets a favorable matchup (OU here).
Pods A and B, just like Pods C and D, will have to get matched up sometimes or else everyone has three teams that will never hit the schedule. In those instances, the eighth game would have to come from somewhere else either on a rotating basis or with a backup designated rival. In the latter option, you could easily make A-C and B-D pairings to create a lot of desirable matchups like this:
A-C: Florida-LSU, Georgia-Texas A&M, Kentucky-Mississippi State, South Carolina-Ole Miss
B-D: Alabama-Oklahoma, Auburn-Texas, Tennessee-Arkansas, Vanderbilt-Missouri
They’re not all headliners, but you create four big time matchups and reunite current cross-division rivals UK and MSU. Not bad.
Those are the basics of the pods options. You can tie the format into pretzels from there, especially if you don’t have home-and-homes always complete consecutively. With a lot of options with endless sub-options to choose from, it could again take the conference a while to settle on something permanent.