If there is one thing I miss in the new age of conference expansion, it’s the former East and West Divisions. When I find myself agreeing with Tennessee fans, it’s a rare and weird day, to say the least.
Now the better question would be…where would Texas be if we still had divisions? My initial thought it that the perception was the East was the easier side of the conference, and as much as they softballed Texas’s inaugural year in the conference with scheduling, they’d be in the East, Oklahoma in the west. Although the natural rival with A&M would suggest West, we did have a standing rivalry with western foe Auburn.
Were that the case, Texas, by their schedule results, would’ve still been in the SECCG as they finished with fewer conference losses and would’ve shut out Georgia from the game but Georgia would’ve made the CFP. In a “what if” scenario such as this, that would mean Beck would’ve gotten the start in the CFP, though we would’ve drawn Arizona State instead of opening round Notre Dame (perhaps) and Texas would’ve faced off against…Ole Miss? Alabama? LSU? Just imagine if one of those three had beaten Texas in the SECCG and would’ve bumped Georgia out of the CFP?
Hypotheticals, I know…but on the same note, do you miss the Divisions? Would we want to be facing Vanderbilt this year…or Missouri?
Discuss.
The bigger question is why Greg gave Texas a Charmin-soft schedule as a welcome to the SEC?
I’m sure it had nothing to do with that large duffel bag of oil money
Because he (and ESPN) wanted an Alabama-Texas SEC championship game the first year to validate the admission. It’s too bad Vandy and Oklahoma didn’t get the memo from Birmingham about Alabama and cooperate.
We have a winner ^^^^. I firmly believe the league for tv ratings wanted the bama Texas matchup.
But to your original question, I think both methods will give results like this. Just look back when to when Bama and LSU were beating the crap out of each other in the West just to beat up on Mizzou or Sackerlina.
I think it was stupid of the SEC to go to a 9 game schedule, but that should help with this somewhat. Hard to avoid playing a few top SEC teams with 9 games.
If they had stuck with divisions and gone to 9 games initially, I think they should have moved Auburn to the East. Texas then would have had to play Bama, LSU, TAMU, Oklahoma, and Ole Miss every year.
If the schedule could have saved the DSOR as an annual game and stayed at 8, I would agree with you.
9 game schedule sort of nullifies divisions. We might never get to Norman or College Station if in a divisional round robin.
Impossible to do 2 divisions with this many teams.
I think we’re going to like this 9 game scheduling format going forward. It seems as though (and that’s the heavy lift) there will be less opportunity for teams to have Charmin schedules every damn year. Now, the catch may be that it’s reviewed every 4 years and they can give Texas all the teams trending down. Or they can put UGA at Auburn like they like to do. Y’all will probably come up with more scenarios than those.
I would have preferred we go back to 10 or 12 rather than to 16.
Conference expansion and realignment sucks.
I noted this in the pod-post 2 or 3 weeks ago, but if you look at the three permanent opponents, and you move Auburn and Alabama (previously the two easternmost teams in the west) to the east, they all break down pretty neatly along east/west lines with only a couple of exceptions….
Honestly I’d take two 8 team divisions. Move Bama and Auburn east, move Missouri to the west where they belong. Then we play everyone in the division every year and rotate two from the west. Who cares if you play the west teams every 8 years. Other than LSU and the MS schools they’re not the SEC anyways.