SEC Realignment And Schedule Options – Part Two

October 20th, 2011 08:00 AM║ Posted By: John Pennington ║ Permalink ║ Schools: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Tags: Alabama Vanderbilt, Auburn Florida, Games Played, SEC

In the South, we tend to take our history and traditions a bit more seriously than folks in other parts of the country. When it comes to our football, that love of tradition is especially powerful.

With the SEC expanding to 14 teams — possibly as soon as next July — the league’s divisional format will need to be tweaked. It’s scheduling plan will need to be re-worked. In doing so, some rivalries will be lost. And that amounts to stomping on the aforementioned love of tradition. That’s dangerous.

The SEC’s last expansion should have taught us that as some old rivalries fade out, new ones will ignite. For example, Auburn’s long-standing rivalries with Tennessee and Florida were lost in 1992. But the Tigers gained LSU and the Vols and Gators became the must-see SEC game of the 1990s. Change isn’t necessarily the end of the world.

That said, the SEC’s goal should — and most likely will be — to preserve as many classic rivalries as possible… in order to keep thousands of SEC fans from losing the teensiest bit of their over-the-top passion.

The rivalry that seems most in danger these days is the Alabama-Tennessee series. For years the schools clashed on the Third Saturday in October. When the league expanded in ’92, the date occasionally changed, but the game remained. It’s a yearly matchup of the two winningest programs in SEC history. The Crimson Tide and Volunteers have collected the most SEC championship hardware since the league’s inception in 1932. If SEC powerbrokers are likely to save any rivalry, it’s that one.

But there are other great games that are in need of protection, too. Below we’ve listed the 22 SEC rivalries that have been played at least 60 times. In some cases we’ve had to side with one school over another when it comes to the actual number of games played. So there’s no need to email us to let us know that the 1925 game between Team A and Team B really shouldn’t have counted because Team A used its JV team and Team B’s squad was composed of World War I vets. We simply want to give you an idea of the games that have the most history. Some may surprise you.

The SEC’s Most-Played Rivalries

Rivalry	Games Played
Auburn – Georgia	114
Mississippi State – Ole Miss	107
Kentucky – Tennessee	106
Tennessee – Vanderbilt	105
LSU – Mississippi State	104
LSU – Ole Miss	98
Alabama – Mississippi State	95
Alabama – Tennessee	93
Florida – Georgia	88
Vanderbilt – Ole Miss	85
Auburn – Mississippi State	84
Kentucky – Vanderbilt	83
Alabama – Vanderbilt	82
Auburn – Florida	82
Alabama – Auburn	75
Alabama – LSU	74
Georgia – Vanderbilt	72
Alabama – Georgia	65
Georgia – Kentucky	64
Ole Miss – Tennessee	64
Georgia – South Carolina	63
Florida – Kentucky	61

Of the 22 rivalries that have been played at least 60 times, four are not played annually in the league’s current eight-game, 5-1-2 format: Auburn-Florida, Alabama-Vanderbilt, Alabama-Georgia and Ole Miss-Tennessee.

The question moving forward is: Which possible divisional alignments will keep the majority of these great rivalries going? In Part Three of our short series on realignment and scheduling, that’s just what we’ll discuss.

(Sidenotes — Some rivalry games have already been played in 2011 while some are still scheduled to be played later in the season. For that reason, the numbers above reflect the number of times rivals have met through the end of the 2010 season.

Also, our goal was to show the oldest rivalries among current SEC members. Naturally, we’ve been asked to include Texas A&M in our breakdown as well, and A&M would have one rivalry on our list: Texas A&M-Arkansas had played each other 67 times through the end of the 2010 season.)

« SEC Realignment And Schedule Options – Part One

Missouri Curators Begin Meetings That Could Lead MU To The SEC »

31 comments

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AnswersInBooks

Here are the realignments I have seen plus one that we shoot around the water cooler. Looking for analysis? That's John's job. I'm just an idiot with a computer.

First, a list of what I think of a priority rivals - games that have history and meaning to the schools. I may be wrong, so disagree if you like.

Also, I like Alignment 2 the best.

Priority Rivalries
Alabama – Auburn
Alabama – Tennessee
Arkansas – LSU
Arkansas – Texas A&M
Auburn – Georgia
Florida – Georgia
Georgia – South Carolina
Kentucky – Tennessee
LSU – Ole Miss
LSU – Texas A&M
MSU – Ole Miss
Ole Miss – Vanderbilt
Tennessee – Vanderbilt

Alignment Possibility 1:
West: Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Missouri, MSU, Ole Miss, Texas A&M
East: Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt

Alignment Possibility 2:
West: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, Texas A&M
East: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, MSU, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt

Alignment Possibility 3:
West: Arkansas, LSU, Missouri, MSU, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt
East: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee

Alignment Possibility 4:
West: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, MSU, Ole Miss, Texas A&M
East: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt

Alignment Possibility 5:
Northwest: Arkansas, LSU, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt
Southeast: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, MSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina

Alignment Possibility 6:
North: Alabama, Auburn, Kentucky, MSU, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
South: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Missouri, Texas A&M, South Carolina

Alignment Possibility 7:
North: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
South: Florida, Georgia, LSU, MSU, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, South Carolina

Redhelmet96

East- Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee.
West- Arkansas, LSU, Miss. State, Ole Miss., Mizzou, Texas A&M, Vandy.

Alabama and Auburn to the East, A&M, Mizzou, and Vandy to the West.
Saves the Bama-Tennessee game, so Bama will not protest unless they don't get A&M as the new cross division rival. This almost hands the West to LSU for the short term but they almost have it now. I believe that this aligment will get the ball rolling, unless the SEC finds a REAL team to come instead of the embarrasement known as Mizzou!

Fayettechill14

^This. All rivalries are restored in this setup, and the balance of power is roughly equal. The East may be a bit stronger, with Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, and Florida at the top than the West, with LSU, Arkansas, Texas A&M, and Missouri as its favorites.

AGator

When there are three teams that would want to play each other every year they would need to be in the same division. I think each of these two groups should not be split:

Kentucky - Tennessee - Vanderbilt
A&M - LSU - Arkansas

Other factors: It would be best for the six teams (Bama, LSU, Auburn, Tenn, UF, UGA) with the most success on the field to be split 3-3 but 4-2 would be OK. Travel distances should be a factor. Traditional rivalries should be preserved if possible.

My preferences in order:

1) Auburn to the East, Mo. and A&M to the West

Sorry Alabama and Tennessee, this makes the most geographic sense. UF and UT gave up their rivalries with Auburn for the good of the conference in 1992. Some day when the league goes to sixteen teams the Alabama-Tennessee rivalry should be a priority to restore.

It might be worth considering not counting out of division games in the standings and let teams schedule whoever they want out of their division. Alabama could schedule Auburn and Tennessee every year and other teams could rotate out of division games without a permanent crossover game. In the current system a team could be undefeated in their division but lose the division to a team they beat who happened to have an easier out of division schedule.

2) New divisions with a Bama-Tenn crossover game:
SE - USC, UGA, UF, Bama, Auburn, Ole Miss, MSU
NW - A&M, LSU, Ark, Mo, UT, Vandy, Ky

I think this does a decent job of keeping as many priorities as possible. The travel distances for NW teams are higher than option 1) though.

3) Missouri to the East.

This grouping preserves the status quo better than 1) or 2). Missouri may agree to this but I don't think it's the right thing to do to them. It's like they are guest workers. I think they'd be more at home playing Arkansas and Texas A&M every year. It doesn't make sense to have Mo. play UF, UGA and USC every year.

IlliniGator

I made the exact same point as your point 1 a month ago about how Florida and Auburn took one for the team when the SEC went to 12 teams, and it's time maybe that Alabama-Tennessee do the same. I had Alabama people writing crazy stuff how Florida and Auburn were never really rivals, then saying how the Tennessee-UF rivalry at the time was bigger than the Auburn-UF one. Obviously that's insane as any Gator or Vol knows that the two schools rarely played until the realignment.

As a Gator who lived near Auburn in Alabama, I would love my Gators getting a chance to beat them every year (I wanted to kick my TV this year, especially with that BS punt interference non-call).

PL61CE1

Actually the Auburn-Florida rivalry was not lost in 1992, but after the 2002 season when the effect of the SEC moving from a 5-2-1 schedule to a 5-1-2 schedule was realized. As you know, when the SEC first expanded to 12 teams, there were 2 traditional cross-division opponents scheduled instead on one like we have today.

johnmrsec

PL61CE1...

You are absolutely correct. The point remains the same -- old rivals fade, new ones emerge -- but I was off by 10 years on that one.

Mea culpa.

John

PBHogg

Not sure what I think of the merits of this idea, but what about dividing the SEC divisions into a North and South (rather than East and West).

In the North: Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss

In the South: Texas A & M, LSU, Mississippi State, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, Alabama

JarrenBlake

Thats been trotted out but the main problemwith it is that the competitive balance is out of whack. The tranditional powers are all in the south and would be much too hard a walk in most years as compared to the North.

The north would hate it because it takes away all of the fertile recruiting grounds of by placing the states of Florida, Texas, Georgia, amd Alabama all in the same divisions.

Milo Moon

John,
I have been in full support of Mizzou to the east from the beginning. First for the ease scheduling and two I believe that the next round of expansion is just 6 years down the road when the B12 band-aid comes undone again. So why turn over the apple cart for scheduling now, when we might be doing it again in 6-10 years.

I also have one suggestion for scheduling that I have not seen mentioned. 6-1.5-1. 6 games against your divisional schools. 1 set permanent game, 2 rotating rivalry games, and 1 rotating against the rest of the other division.

In Tennessee's case with Mizzou in the east:
6 divisional games
2 rotating games - Auburn and Ole Miss (our two longest rivalries lost in the last expansion)
1 rotating games against the remaining 4 schools. If you don't schedule the series back to back, you could actually play every school in a four year rotation.

JarrenBlake

Truthfully I think Mizzou to the East just to protect the Bama-Tennessee game is silly. Listen the game is long past its glory days, and if you take into account the post 1992 and BCS eras, when has this game mattered all that much? There was a brief what 2 year window in the late 90s I think. Even then you don't realy look to that game as the match up of the year. this was a game that our grandfather's loved and our father's liked. Today its almost always just another game. Take this week for instance, tune up game for Bama. Sometimes its been a tune up game for Tennessee. But in 20 years its rarely been meaningful for both teams outsideof being a conference game.

MIZ_SEC

Mizzou to the East isn't just to protect Bama-UT though. The distance for Mizzou between campuses in the West and East is about the same, and Mizzou has many more alums in the East region. Moving someone like A&M to the West would obviously be stupid, but Mizzou's location makes it work for either East or West.

JarrenBlake

Its not just distance. Its also about Mizzou's recruiting needs. The need a game in Texas and they wouldbe better suited to playing Arkansas every year as well. Drop the Ark game and make Texas A&M their divisional rival, would solve most issues on that front.

Just each time I hear Mizzou going west its about protecting Bama-Tenn and keeping Auburn from going to the east. Which I could care less about either of those situations. Frankly dropping the Tenn as a perm rivalry game would suit me fine. Auburn gets to continually play in Georgia, a recruit rich state, while Bama get Tenn, a recruit lite state in a rivalry that just is not living upto its billing for a long time now.

atl14dat

Hopefully the next move that Slive pushes for will be an immediate move to a Nine Game conference Schedule.

Also hope he would also suggest with some authority that "One" of the Three OOC games be against another BCS School.

That would then reduce the "dregs portion'of the OOC Schedule for SEC schools to just two games against Non BCS and FCS schools.

The current Out of Conference creampuffs scheduling is an abject disgrace for most SEC schools, Mine Included Tennessee.

Their Scheduling of Games against Montana, Buffalo and MTSU are an absolute joke.

Paul Brackin

Generally 7 home games are the standard norm needed to finance your program and provide the "give back" to the community by supporting local commerce and local govt through collected taxes. Although I hate the cremepuff schedules, I generally accept them for early 1st games and the norm has become to use them prior to playing your most important "rival" when an open date is not available.

It seems silly to have a league with so many teams if you never have a chance to play one another. With 9 you could get better cross over play and in years when you had only 4 conference home games it would still allow for 3 cream puffs to maintain the 7 game status but in years where you were assured 5 home conference games, it could afford you the opportunity to play the AWAY portion of a home/home series, which is necessary to play any established FBS opponent or that game slot could be used to play in an invited pre-season matchup at a neutral site like Dallas or Atlanta has provided in recent years. With any proposal there are objections, best to hear them now so we can figure out if they would be feasible.

John Bragg

Yankee outsider speaking, but it seems to me that that's how you get 8-9-10 bowl teams. SEC teams don't have to justify their strength of schedule. Mississippi State beats Southern Miss, Memphis and Troy, plus 3 SEC teams, they're in a bowl and the bowl is glad to have them. (Massive fan support helps--6-6 Mississippi State will bring more fans along than 10-2 Rutgers)

Even for the national title game, say Mississippi goes undefeated playing Southern Miss, Memphis and Grambling. They're more likely to go than say South Carolina if they lose to Clemson but go 12-1. (12-1 with a loss at Clemson could be good enough some years.)

MIZ_SEC

I wonder if the coaches are truly 100% against this, or if they are putting on a PR show right now so they can use a potential 9 game SEC schedule as a carrot to increase the below-market TV deals.

I agree that a 9 game schedule makes a lot more sense with 14 teams, but is it worth 1 or 2 less SEC teams making a bowl game? I don't know the answer.

Mike

Very true, my fellow Vol fan. However, future schedules are not that way. We have NC State next season, Oregon in 2013, Oklahoma in a one and one in 2014 and 2015, UCONN in 2015 and 2016, Nebraska in 2016 and 2017, and Ohio State in 2018 and 2019. I wouldnt exactly call those creampuff games. This is assuming, of course, nothing gets bought out as in N.C. this season.

atl14dat

Agreed Mike.

As you pointed out, let's just hope Dooley doesn't hold enough sway with Hart to ask for any of those games to be bought out.

Tenn has actually been pretty good in this regard over the years, and I guess that is what bitterly disappointed me in the 2011 season.

Tennessee racking up Wins over Montana, Buffalo and MTSU mean nothing to me as a UT fan and alum. Just a cheap backdoor ploy to try and be slotted into another irrelevant Bowl game.

As I suggested above 9 Conference Games, One BCS Non Conference Opponent and hopefully the abolition of any FCS Schools on the schedule would be a huge step in the right direction. Tennessee would need other SEC schools to step in that direction also.

Best thing about it would be the Inventory for an SEC network comprised of Tier Three media games.

Andrew

Your analysis needs to be changed. Now that A&M is part of the deal, you need to include their games against Arkansas and LSU. They may already qualify for 60+ games. Who has USC played second most? It is important that all members of the SEC have sound rivalry games, even if they are newer. That makes a strong league.

johnmrsec

Andrew...

Those are new additions to the league and A&M will most definitely remain in the West Division, protecting its rivalries. But we'll add a note to the post just the same.

Thanks for reading the site,
John

Oh, and we looked at South Carolina's SEC rivalries. Only Georgia has been an opponent more than 60 times. As we stated in the piece.

Rob

I don't think it should matter that A&M is a new addition. Their rivalries should still be protected also. I'm sure you'll think that I'm over-reacting, but there seems to be a sense among older SEC teams that their rivalries are more important. A&M has played some teams over 100 times also, but they gave that up to join the SEC. We should respect that and honor their wishes as much as anyone else.

Also, I think the time span of a rivalry can only be used so much to give it credence over others. I'm not sure that some of the games above even qualify to be labeled as a rivalry, even though the teams have played each other for many decades. The most fair way to protect rivalries would be to impose a limit on how many rivalries each team can protect. Didn't they do something like that in '92?

Rob

John, I'm sorry.

I wasn't implying that you did say that, actually. I just wanted to get that stuff off my chest and that seemed like a good place to do it. In hindsight, I should have started a new thread or waited until another time.

You do an amazing job and I appreciate that very much. Don't let people drag you down by worrying about what we say, because it's just a forum. Your voice is the reason people come here in the first place, so if it wasn't appreciated, then no one would ever complain.

Thanks for keeping us on top of everything SEC related and for the forum where we can disagree with you openly. I very much appreciate what you do.

johnmrsec

Rob...

I didn't say their rivalries shouldn't be protected. Never. Not once. Didn't come close to saying that. I was simply trying to show the oldest rivalries among the SEC's current members.

I am always amazed at how people will scour a story to find fault with anything.

John

GeoffDawg

What I found interesting recently was that despite sharing a common border, Missouri and Tennessee have never in their history met on the football field.

Also, from a Georgia fan’s perspective, I think you’ve got to protect Georgia – Auburn and Georgia – Florida. Beyond that, I think we’d be willing to accommodate changes if necessary.

AGator

I think you'd also have to protect Georgia - South Carolina. Georgia is the only conference state contiguous to South Carolina.

viageorgia

Guys, UGA's games against its East rivals are not in need of protecting because we will be playing them every year regardless if Mizzou or Auburn move to the East. AU is our permanent West rival and if they move to the East, it will be continue to be played. So we'll end up picking up a new permanent West rival.

GeoffDawg

I don't disagree with your logic. This was just a discussion on which rivalries are most important to the fans.

GeoffDawg

That’s true but even though we’ve played 60+ times, from a tradition perspective, most Georgia fans would view it as our fifth most important rivalry at best following Auburn, Florida, Georgia Tech, and Tennessee. Even though we hardly play them anymore, many older fans have better memories of the series with Clemson than they do with SC. Nothing against them but it’s only in recent years that they’ve been consistently competitive.

GeoffDawg

A lot really depends on your generation. For the older fans, they would probably consider Tech to be our biggest rival but my generation would likely give the nod to Florida with Tech at 3rd or 4th. I attribute this to the lopsided domination in favor of Georgia over the last 20 years. By that same token, I really couldn’t blame Florida fans if they don’t give the Georgia game the same gravity they used to.

AGator

I was looking at the UGA-USC game mostly from the USC perspective. Georgia is their only contiguous state in the conference so UGA is the only team with much potential be be a rivalry.

Most UGA fans I know rank Tech as their biggest rivalry with Florida second. Since I live in Florida this may overstate the Florida rivalry though. Is Auburn the biggest rival for UGA fans living farther north?

I remember when UGA was UF's biggest game of the year. Before FSU became competitive in the late 1980s the top UF rivalries were probably Georgia, Auburn, Miami and then FSU. Georgia Tech was bigger game for UF than Miami when Tech was still in the SEC.

Trackbacks

Homepage | MrSEC.com says:

October 21, 2011 at 2:19 am

[...] Also, here’s the list of SEC rivalries that have been played 60 or more times (and with Texas A&M joining the league next year, we include Texas A&M-Arkansas on our list of 23) which we covered in Part Two of this series: [...]

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October 27, 2011 at 4:28 pm

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[...]Blue Chip Stories | MrSEC.com[...]…

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November 4, 2011 at 10:20 pm

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November 17, 2011 at 1:50 pm

[...] SEC Realignment And Schedule Options – Part Two from mrsec.com [...]

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