(02-13-2026 06:18 PM)inutech Wrote:  but divisions make perfect sense for the 'belt.

This.

The only way pods would work is you would need to add 1 to each division and then break those divisions into 2 because I know Troy doesn't want to get stuck in a pod with Coastal to leave behind the teams we wanted to rejoin with when we expanded & I don't think Coastal wants to trade App St. or ODU or JMU or Marshall for Troy.

SBC East Pod 1 - Ohio*/Marshall/ODU/JMU
SBC East Pod 2 - App St./Coastal/GSU/GS

SBC West Pod 1 - Troy/South/?/Southern Miss
SBC West Pod 2 - Arkansas St./ULM/Tech/Louisiana

So the ? in West Pod 1 would best be Jax St./MTSU/WKU based on geography.
You could move Arkansas St. or Louisiana to Pod 1 add then add Missouri St. to Pod 2 if you so chose.

However, why even split into pods at that point? Just play 1 less cross-divisional game. The SBC is building to a world (in my opinion) where we are 2 mini conferences of 8-9 teams each sharing a bigger conference and shared media profile.

So possibly 1 cross-conference game per school in football each season.

1-2 home and 1-2 away games in MBB/WBB and same for baseball or softball series. (For basketball make them flex games to match up best NET pairs as possible)

(02-16-2026 11:10 AM)Troy_Fan_15 Wrote:  However, why even split into pods at that point? Just play 1 less cross-divisional game. The SBC is building to a world (in my opinion) where we are 2 mini conferences of 8-9 teams each sharing a bigger conference and shared media profile.

This is what we keep coming back to. The two divisions are both very tight, with similar programs. Even E to W we're tighter than most conferences, but the divisions are excellent. E has had an advantage in overall strength in Football and Basketball, but the W has held its own in Champ Games (more than, in the case of football). Baseball has a deeper W, but CCU in the E is the best overall program. I don't really see where anyone is hurting and needs a pod to fix things?

Why even do set pods? Just give each team 3 yearly rivals and rotate the rest. That way you don’t have situations where App State is either playing Georgia Southern or Marshall or JMU. They can play all of them, hypothetically. Not even hard to set up.

(02-17-2026 05:02 AM)lelandhardy Wrote:  Why even do set pods? Just give each team 3 yearly rivals and rotate the rest. That way you don’t have situations where App State is either playing Georgia Southern or Marshall or JMU. They can play all of them, hypothetically. Not even hard to set up.

Sounds confusing but you would get to play all the teams. Nah...just stick with divisions.

(02-17-2026 05:02 AM)lelandhardy Wrote:  Why even do set pods? Just give each team 3 yearly rivals and rotate the rest. That way you don’t have situations where App State is either playing Georgia Southern or Marshall or JMU. They can play all of them, hypothetically. Not even hard to set up.

That's worth considering as an alternative to set pods.

But the concept to beat is the status quo, and this isn't remotely as good as the status quo.

And I doubt there is really any consideration of anything other than status quo right now.

But just for the sake of the conversation, I think my personal ranking of options would be something like:

1. Current divisional system with 14.












2. Set pods.
3. Some number (larger than 1) of permanent rivals with conference-wide rotation.
4. 1 permanent rival with conference-wide rotation.







5. Pure rotation with nothing protected.
















6. Divisions but "leaders and legends" or "atlantic and coastal" style instead of geographical.