(10-11-2021 08:06 AM)Michael in Raleigh Wrote:  This is going to be impossible for schedules to satisfy everyone in terms of keeping games even in strength of schedule, frequency of rival games played, etc. This is the bed the SEC made by expanding to 16. The following is the best I could come up with.

They're going to have to do pods. LSU, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State are not going to sign off on being permanently separated from their longtime conference mates to the east, the pre-1992 SEC teams.

Potential pods:

OU
Texas
A&M
Mizzou

LSU
Arkansas
Ole Miss
Mississippi State

Florida
Georgia
South Carolina
Kentucky

Auburn
Alabama
Tennessee
Vanderbilt

9 game conference schedule.

3 games in your pod plus four against the pod you're paired with for two years.

Eighth game vs. a permanent cross-pod rival.
Ninth game vs. A team in the fourth pod.

Cross-pod rivals:

A&M-LSU
Mizzou-Arkansas
Vandy-Ole Miss
Auburn-Georgia
Kentucky-Tennessee
Alabama-OU
Texas-Florida
Mississippi State-SC

When your cross-pod rival falls in the same division as yours for two years, you'll play a team from another pod who's also sharing a division with their cross-pod rival.

I hope that makes sense. It's going to be messy. Schools aren't going to be happy. No sympathy.

I don't think they will do pods. You have to decide on how many games you want to play (8?, 9?, 10?) and then you can protect a number of schools for each team and alternate the rest.

With an 8 game schedule, each school can protect one game and then the other 14 schools rotate home/away over a four year period.

With a 9 game schedule, each school can protect three games and then the other 12 schools rotate home/away over a four year period.

With a 10 game schedule, each school can protect five games and then the other 10 schools rotate home/away over a four year period.

The eight game schedule leaves out a lot of good annual rivalries. i.e. does Alabama want to keep Auburn or Tennessee each year?

The nine game schedule seems like it would be able to protect most of the important rivalries, but then brings up the problem of every-other-year having only four conference home games while some schools get five. Coaches will grumble.

The ten game schedule would be able to cover just about all of the important rivalries, and you can use some of those protected slots to potentially figure out scheduling imbalances. However, you are playing ten conference games at this point and that may not be ideal. This would probably maximize the SEC TV deal, though, and likely puts it well ahead of even the Big Ten's.

None of these are perfect, but they are better than pods at protecting the games the schools want most. Top two teams play in the title game every year.