With the upcoming nine-game SEC schedule, the conference is finally going to the pod system. In this arrangement, each team will have three permanent rivals it plays annually alongside a rotation of six
drawn from the remaining league teams.
Today, Chris Low reported that the assignments for the first four years of the new scheduling scheme, and I have to say, it’s pretty underwhelming. You can see the full list here. Let’s take a quick look.
The Good
As a Georgia fan, I’m pretty happy with this breakdown. I consider Auburn and Florida our two main rivals, so I’m glad we’ll preserve those two. South Carolina is a perfectly cromulent third choice from the remaining options. It’s a rivalry with a good bit of history behind it, and I enjoy frying or smoking a whole chicken when we play them.
The other aspect of this schedule that I think works is the alignment of the old Big 12/Southwestern Conference members with one another. Even though Missouri and Texas A&M have been in the SEC for more than a decade now, there’s plenty of bad blood between the two of them and Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Reviving those rivalries should be a good thing for the new SEC.
The Bad
Beyond that, this announcement is pretty disappointing. While I concede that this couldn’t have been an easy exercise, a lot of these matchups make no sense. Here’s a quick rundown of the problems I see.
The biggest mistake is eliminating the Alabama-LSU rivalry, which was always appointment viewing. Ditching it in favor of Alabama-Mississippi State, a game nobody could possibly want to see more of, makes no sense. I suspect Greg Byrne lobbied hard to get one weaker team on the Tide’s permanent roster. It’s a shame that came at the expense of one of the league’s traditional marquee matchups.
Tennessee’s rivalry with Alabama, though lopsided of late, is probably its most important one. I also get the in-state relevance of the Tennessee-Vanderbilt game, but I bet any Tennessee fan will tell you that they consider Florida a bigger rival than Kentucky. One of my biggest takeaways is that Tennessee is making out like a bandit by pulling Vandy and Kentucky.
Ole Miss was Vandy’s permanent rival from the west. No clue why Mississippi State replaced Mississippi Classic there.
I guess the Arkansas-LSU game is a named rivalry with a traveling trophy, but it’s been uncompetitive for so long, I don’t think the fun of seeing the boot trophy is worth keeping it on the schedule, especially when it means losing the Alabama game.
The Weird
Ole Miss-Oklahoma feels culturally weird to me for some reason, but it could make for some fun unstoppable force meets immovable object games.
Set an alarm for South Carolina vs. Kentucky because otherwise you’ll never remember it’s happening.
I’m expecting the Arkansas-Texas matchup to provide some extremely bizarre and entertaining games.
I can only assume that Auburn got Vanderbilt because its two primary rivals are such perennial contenders now, but as an undergrad alum of Vandy, I can tell you that’s not a game either side will care about. Though, in fairness, most Vanderbilt students have only recently learned there’s a football team.
What jumps out at you from this list? Where do you think they got it right, and what would you change?
