(06-01-2022 11:34 AM)inutech Wrote:  

(06-01-2022 11:14 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-31-2022 10:37 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  Interesting. I assume 4 of the no votes against 9 games were Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. I would wager OU and UT would be opposed as well. Not sure about the other 2 no's. Missouri, perhaps? Texas A&M since they were opposed to the expansion in the first place?

Agreed on the first 6 of those.

Missouri might want 9 conference games to get the extra SEC game at home every year. Wouldn't it be every other year?They don't have overwhelming pressure to contend, so it doesn't matter as much if the extra SEC game makes the schedule more challenging.

Agreed that TAMU would want to stay at 8. They have a lot of pressure to max their win total, and playing 8 conference games makes that easier. For the same reason, I'll guess the 8th vote for 8 is LSU.

Yes, just omitted that word when I typed it.

(05-31-2022 10:37 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(05-31-2022 09:51 PM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  

Interesting. I assume 4 of the no votes against 9 games were Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. I would wager OU and UT would be opposed as well. Not sure about the other 2 no's. Missouri, perhaps? Texas A&M since they were opposed to the expansion in the first place?

I'm curious to know exactly which schools want 8 conference games and which ones want 9. We may never know...

Florida and Georgia could be in favor of 9, though. Well, if they aren't, it shouldn't be because of their respective ACC rivalries.

Both of them have been scheduling 3 OOC P5 teams for future seasons, and a lot of quality ones at that. They are willing to do what it takes to have 11 P games per season, which is to limit themselves to 13 designated home games every 2 years. (UF schedules -- UGa schedules)

Needless to say, 9 conference games wouldn't hinder their ability to have 11 P games. Actually it should make it easier for them because then they would only need to find 2 available OOC Ps for each season, one to play at home, one for the road, instead of 3 -- 2 for home and 1 for the road in these years and 2 for the road and 1 for home in those years.

Yesterday Coach Smart was asked if preferred 8 conference games or 9. He didn't say, but he reiterated the apparent desire to play more big games.

"I want the University of Georgia to play in big games, so whether that's an extra SEC game or another Power Five opponent that attracts our fan base and excites our fan base ... but I don't have a stance."

(06-01-2022 04:20 PM)chester Wrote:  Florida and Georgia could be in favor of 9, though. Well, if they aren't, it shouldn't be because of their respective ACC rivalries.

Both of them have been scheduling 3 OOC P5 teams for future seasons, and a lot of quality ones at that. They are willing to do what it takes to have 11 P games per season, which is to limit themselves to 13 designated home games every 2 years. (UF schedules -- UGa schedules)

I just looked at Florida and Georgia's 2022 schedules, and both have a G5 and an FCS opponent scheduled.

(06-01-2022 05:08 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(06-01-2022 04:20 PM)chester Wrote:  Florida and Georgia could be in favor of 9, though. Well, if they aren't, it shouldn't be because of their respective ACC rivalries.

Both of them have been scheduling 3 OOC P5 teams for future seasons, and a lot of quality ones at that. They are willing to do what it takes to have 11 P games per season, which is to limit themselves to 13 designated home games every 2 years. (UF schedules -- UGa schedules)

I just looked at Florida and Georgia's 2022 schedules, and both have a G5 and an FCS opponent scheduled.

*beginning in 2026

EDIT: Note Florida's all P 2031 schedule:

@ Texas (will be SEC by then)
vs Arizona State
@ Notre Dame
vs Florida State

Yes, that limits them to 5 true home games (UF is the designated home team of the WLOCP in odd years), but there is room for 7 in 2032.

(06-01-2022 07:05 AM)RUScarlets Wrote:  

(06-01-2022 04:52 AM)Crayton Wrote:  

(06-01-2022 04:01 AM)RUScarlets Wrote:  If they only play 8 I'm not sure how they cycle through all the teams? 3+6+6 is more clean. If it's 3+5+5, you miss two teams every two years. It's only worth it if there are OOC matchups the SEC absolutely has to keep on the schedule. Obviously FLa, USC, UGa, UK have that. But who in the west has that? Unless Mizzou KU or Bedlam remains a thing, there is no impetus for removing a 9th SEC game. You need to generate a made for TV game regardless, and I only provide context with respect to rivalry weekend. However, same is applicable to all weeks in the season.

You just cycle every three years instead of every two, you even get a 4th rival if you do that. Heck, that 4th rival can be sold to ESPN and you can get the same best-on-best content with 8 as you can get with 9. Unless Ole Miss-South Carolina is really worth that much more than Ole Miss-Southern Miss, I’m still not convinced 9 is an eventuality.

Yeah but you may need that 9th game for tie breaking purposes. What if there is no H2H and three 11-1 teams are tied (once in a lifetime but possible)? Or the much more likely scenario of 3x 11-1 where one school has a H2H (perhaps a home win for that matter), but only over 1/2 schools. There is no way to break that tie aside from some type of strength of victory or ranking to eliminate 1/3 schools. It's just ugly with a 3-5-5. Just stick to SEC games. You can let schools keep one OOC rival, and then you just have to schedule another G5/P5. Or FCS/G5 if schools want to lighten their load. I also never understood the concept of an all-SEC non-conference game, although that may make sense if divisions were to remain in place. With 16 teams, you go 3+6+6.

If the top 3 teams are tied with 1 loss, it does not matter if there is 0, 1, 2, or 3 H2H games among them. You will need to use a more esoteric tie-breakers to seed them 1, 2, 3. And, that is true whether the SEC plays 7, 8, 9, or 10 games. So, not sure what you are pointing to. (?)

Perhaps the once-in-a-lifetime doomsday scenario you are trying to avoid is 3 teams going 8-0? It has been stated in other threads but the SEC can avoid that if 3 of each team's 4 permanent rivals are within divisions/pods. Honestly, the only must-be-annual game not captured by pods is Auburn-Georgia (and maaaaybe A&M-Texas), every other team's 4th rival can be sold to ESPN.

(06-01-2022 04:01 AM)RUScarlets Wrote:  If they only play 8 I'm not sure how they cycle through all the teams? 3+6+6 is more clean. If it's 3+5+5, you miss two teams every two years. It's only worth it if there are OOC matchups the SEC absolutely has to keep on the schedule. Obviously FLa, USC, UGa, UK have that. But who in the west has that? Unless Mizzou KU or Bedlam remains a thing, there is no impetus for removing a 9th SEC game. You need to generate a made for TV game regardless, and I only provide context with respect to rivalry weekend. However, same is applicable to all weeks in the season.

Supposedly the 8 is 1+7+7

With 16 schools they should really go to 10 games.

An amorphous schedule playing every other school 4 times over 8 years (60 of 80 games). The other 20 games may scheduled as the schools want. If Alabama wants to play Auburn every season they spend 4 of their 20 tokens.

Get a NCAA rule change for a 13 game regular season.

a. If a conference has more than 14 schools and a 10-game conference schedule, a school may play a 13th game if it is a 7th home game, against an FCS opponent or an FBS opponent with a losing record over the past 5 seasons.

1+7+7??? How they hell is that supposed to work in the SEC? Crazy talk, but if I had to gander:

LSU Ark
UT A&M
Bama Burn
Fla UGa
Tenn Vandy
OleMiss MSU
UK USC
OU Mizzou

(06-02-2022 07:04 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  1+7+7??? How they hell is that supposed to work in the SEC? Crazy talk, but if I had to gander:

LSU Ark
UT A&M
Bama Burn
Fla UGa
Tenn Vandy
OleMiss MSU
UK USC
OU Mizzou

No, they would never protect that few opponents. It'll be at least 3 regardless of whether they stick with 8 games or move up to 9.

(06-02-2022 07:06 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(06-02-2022 07:04 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  1+7+7??? How they hell is that supposed to work in the SEC? Crazy talk, but if I had to gander:

LSU Ark
UT A&M
Bama Burn
Fla UGa
Tenn Vandy
OleMiss MSU
UK USC
OU Mizzou

No, they would never protect that few opponents. It'll be at least 3 regardless of whether they stick with 8 games or move up to 9.

That is the supposed options right now, 1+7 or 3+6.

If 1+7 is chosen UT-Austin would almost certainly be with OU though, not A&M, and for that reason alone I really hope that plan is not chosen.

1+7 also likely ends annual rivalries of Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee. Both plans likely end the LSU-Alabama rivalry on a yearly basis.

(06-02-2022 07:06 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(06-02-2022 07:04 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  1+7+7??? How they hell is that supposed to work in the SEC? Crazy talk, but if I had to gander:

LSU Ark
UT A&M
Bama Burn
Fla UGa
Tenn Vandy
OleMiss MSU
UK USC
OU Mizzou

No, they would never protect that few opponents. It'll be at least 3 regardless of whether they stick with 8 games or move up to 9.

If they decide to remain with 8 games and more than one permanent rivalry, then teams would not be able to play other teams more than an average of once every two years. Now considering SEC teams currently play non division non crossover teams much rarer than that, that would probably not be a deal breaker if SEC teams really don't want 9 games and don't want to give up having just 1 permanent rival.

Let's say each SEC team gets 3 permanent rivals. That leaves 12 other SEC opponents. We can divide them into three groups of 4. Teams would play those other 12 teams in three cycles. Then teams would play one other SEC game a year and those can be determined by the conference/ESPN (hopefully this gives us more Alabama/Georgia's and Alabama/Oklahoma's). Teams would still get to play every SEC team at least twice every six years and visit every SEC stadium once every six years with bonus games possible and of course the Alabama/Auburn's, Georgia/Florida's, Texas/Oklahoma's, etc. playing annually. This is still better than what we have now and if schools want twice in four years, go to nine conference games or cut rivalries to one per team.

And if teams "had" to have only one rival, my guess is they'll just pair up Texas and Oklahoma so Texas A&M doesn't "have" to play UT every year.

(06-02-2022 07:44 PM)schmolik Wrote:  

(06-02-2022 07:06 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(06-02-2022 07:04 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  1+7+7??? How they hell is that supposed to work in the SEC? Crazy talk, but if I had to gander:

LSU Ark
UT A&M
Bama Burn
Fla UGa
Tenn Vandy
OleMiss MSU
UK USC
OU Mizzou

No, they would never protect that few opponents. It'll be at least 3 regardless of whether they stick with 8 games or move up to 9.

If they decide to remain with 8 games and more than one permanent rivalry, then teams would not be able to play other teams more than an average of once every two years. Now considering SEC teams currently play non division non crossover teams much rarer than that, that would probably not be a deal breaker if SEC teams really don't want 9 games and don't want to give up having just 1 permanent rival.

Let's say each SEC team gets 3 permanent rivals. That leaves 12 other SEC opponents. We can divide them into three groups of 4. Teams would play those other 12 teams in three cycles. Then teams would play one other SEC game a year and those can be determined by the conference/ESPN (hopefully this gives us more Alabama/Georgia's and Alabama/Oklahoma's). Teams would still get to play every SEC team at least twice every six years and visit every SEC stadium once every six years with bonus games possible and of course the Alabama/Auburn's, Georgia/Florida's, Texas/Oklahoma's, etc. playing annually. This is still better than what we have now and if schools want twice in four years, go to nine conference games or cut rivalries to one per team.

And if teams "had" to have only one rival, my guess is they'll just pair up Texas and Oklahoma so Texas A&M doesn't "have" to play UT every year.

I think they will go to 9 conference games to keep ESPN happy. But if they stay at 8 and go divisionless, it will be a 2-6 or 3-5. With a 2-6 you get the other teams 6 out of 13 years. With a 3-5 you get them 5 out of 12. That's not much different than 1 out of 2.

SEC still might want to make a decision for ‘23 and ‘24. Sounds like they’ll be keeping the current East vs. West. I think I said, elsewhere, they’d be the last to drop divisions. It’ll happen by ‘25 though.

SEC could make divisions work if they wanted
Move Alabama and Auburn to the east and Missouri to the west

The biggest losses would be the Alabama and Mississippi schools being split and Alabama LSU

(06-02-2022 08:55 PM)solohawks Wrote:  SEC could make divisions work if they wanted
Move Alabama and Auburn to the east and Missouri to the west

The biggest losses would be the Alabama and Mississippi schools being split and Alabama LSU

The biggest losses would be almost never playing the teams in the other division.

With 8 games:

0 + 4/5 + 4/10

Each school ranks five 5 preferred opponents along with the rest and sends it to Birmingham. It two schools list each other, they are placed in each others group of five. If a school reaches its limit of five, then any other schools that wanted to include them in its group of five has that option eliminated.

So for example, if Vanderbilt had included Alabama among its top 5, and Alabama had met its five (e.g Alabama-Auburn, Alabama-Tennessee, Alabama-Mississippi State and two others, then Vanderbilt's 6th choice would be considered.

Eventually you start working through preferences. If two schools had listed each other 6th, this could be preferred to the case where one school B had listed C as number 5, but C had listed B as number 9.

Now then let schools if the want to switch to:

1 + 3/4 + 4/10.

Instead of trying to force every school to play certain schools every year, even when they don't care one way or the other, you let the schools decide.

Alabama may want to play Auburn every year, but might be content to play Tennessee 4 out of five years.

But you could extend this:

2 + 2/3 + 4/10

So Auburn might play Alabama and Georgia every year, and play Florida more frequently than Missouri,

Or you could have

3 + 1/2 + 4/10

Not every school in SEC can identify three rivals.

Texas might want A&M and OU every year, but do they really care about Arkansas, who they have only played 6 times since the left the SWC, and two of those were in bowl games?

Is this mathematically possible? It doesn't matter, it can still be used as an optimization goal. Let the universities compete. The winning solution gets an academic scholarship in Applied Mathematics or Computer Science from the SEC.

(06-02-2022 08:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(06-02-2022 07:44 PM)schmolik Wrote:  

(06-02-2022 07:06 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(06-02-2022 07:04 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  1+7+7??? How they hell is that supposed to work in the SEC? Crazy talk, but if I had to gander:

LSU Ark
UT A&M
Bama Burn
Fla UGa
Tenn Vandy
OleMiss MSU
UK USC
OU Mizzou

No, they would never protect that few opponents. It'll be at least 3 regardless of whether they stick with 8 games or move up to 9.

If they decide to remain with 8 games and more than one permanent rivalry, then teams would not be able to play other teams more than an average of once every two years. Now considering SEC teams currently play non division non crossover teams much rarer than that, that would probably not be a deal breaker if SEC teams really don't want 9 games and don't want to give up having just 1 permanent rival.

Let's say each SEC team gets 3 permanent rivals. That leaves 12 other SEC opponents. We can divide them into three groups of 4. Teams would play those other 12 teams in three cycles. Then teams would play one other SEC game a year and those can be determined by the conference/ESPN (hopefully this gives us more Alabama/Georgia's and Alabama/Oklahoma's). Teams would still get to play every SEC team at least twice every six years and visit every SEC stadium once every six years with bonus games possible and of course the Alabama/Auburn's, Georgia/Florida's, Texas/Oklahoma's, etc. playing annually. This is still better than what we have now and if schools want twice in four years, go to nine conference games or cut rivalries to one per team.

And if teams "had" to have only one rival, my guess is they'll just pair up Texas and Oklahoma so Texas A&M doesn't "have" to play UT every year.

I think they will go to 9 conference games to keep ESPN happy. But if they stay at 8 and go divisionless, it will be a 2-6 or 3-5. With a 2-6 you get the other teams 6 out of 13 years. With a 3-5 you get them 5 out of 12. That's not much different than 1 out of 2.

The trick with 9 games will be making sure that the schools with ACC end of year rivals host those games in the years where they have 5 road SEC games, so that they can still get 7 home games in total.

(06-02-2022 09:01 PM)inutech Wrote:  

(06-02-2022 08:55 PM)solohawks Wrote:  SEC could make divisions work if they wanted
Move Alabama and Auburn to the east and Missouri to the west

The biggest losses would be the Alabama and Mississippi schools being split and Alabama LSU

The biggest losses would be almost never playing the teams in the other division.

The SEC is too big for a lot of things. Maybe the SEC gets wild and goes to 17 schools. Rotate 8 on and 8 off. Everybody gets a home and home every 4 years. Then have a 4 team playoff for the conference championship. Personally I prefer East-West and no permanent crossover opponents. If there is a game that has to be played, play it in non-conference. Complicated scheduling processes for everyone over a handfull of games isn't worth it to me.

(06-02-2022 09:09 PM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  The trick with 9 games will be making sure that the schools with ACC end of year rivals host those games in the years where they have 5 road SEC games, so that they can still get 7 home games in total.

Iowa and Iowa State have been doing it for years. The issue then is they have five road games locked in every year which would mean any other non conference road games means a sixth road game and only six home games and that would be the case for the Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina teams.

(06-03-2022 05:50 AM)schmolik Wrote:  only six home games

Oh, the humanity!

(I agree with the point you're making that they won't want to do that, it's just that as a G5 fan I have so much less than zero sympathy for the "we must have 7-8 home games per year to survive" policies of P5 teams).