SEC commissioner Mike Slive hopes to have the future football schedule for the conference set by late-May, he told the Memphis Commercial-Appeal.
Slive and the 14 SEC athletic directors discussed the issue earlier this month in Nashville at the women’s basketball tournament and then the following week in New Orleans at the men’s tournament.
Here is the question posed and the answer Slive provided regarding the football schedule:
Q: How have the future football scheduling (for 2013 and beyond) meetings progressed with the league’s athletic directors?
A: “The First Amendment is alive and well in the SEC. When we put together this year’s 2012 schedule including our two new members, time was of the essence. It was very complicated, and I was proud that every athletic director had to give something. It wasn’t easy, but in the final analysis, we got it scheduled.
“Looking ahead, each institution is trying to figure out how to protect their interests, but also what’s in the best interest of the league to help us maintain the success we’ve had. Some rivalries have been lost nationwide in expansion, and we value rivalries. Protecting rivalries is something we clearly want to do. Our goal is get the scheduling done before Destin (at the annual SEC spring business meetings in late May).”
Although no public decision has been made yet, it appears that the SEC is favoring keeping an 8-game conference schedule with protected cross-division rivals.
Shortly after the meeting in Nashville, South Carolina president Harris Pastides said that Texas A&M is their “likely” new cross-division rival. A&M president R. Bowen Loftin followed that with the tweet “Just had a great conversation with the South Carolina president about our permanent SEC rivalry.”
Keeping the 8-game conference schedule with protected cross-division rivals (6-1-1 format) would allow historical rivalries to continue, such as Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee. It could also create a new rivalry with border states Arkansas and Missouri.
If the SEC adopts the 8-game slate and 6-1-1 format going forward, it will take 12 years for each team to play every other team from the opposite division. That is, unless they decide to play each cross-division team in succession rather than home-and-home. Then it would take only six years.
I assume the 6-1-1 schedule football will pan out in the near future,not so sure about 9-game conference schedule.Honestly,I am interested in what does this expansion mean for the college basketball schedules MEN’S & WOMEN’S,assuming new conference alignment in Men’s basketball
we will probably not see the two divisions anymore!!!!?
I think the 2-division setup will be used for basketball as well…
Home and away vs divisional opponents (12 games)
+ Home or away vs non-divisional opponents (7 games)
= 19 game conference schedule
So then the non-divisional games will rotate season to season. 4 home/3 away one season, 3 home/4 away the next.
I don’t like the idea of having divisions in non-football sports. There are too many cases in basketball, particularly in the SEC East, where one division is so much stronger. There don’t need to be divisions.
Kro, if you’re saying that there are possibilities where one division could be stronger than the other in a given sport, then why can’t that hold true for football? Oh wait, it does! The SEC West is currently stronger than the SEC East in football. But the conference has to believe that tides will change and the strength will balance out or at least shift a bit over time. And that has happened (i.e, Florida in 2008). So the same should hold true in other sports, including basketball.
The difference, Mr. Apples, is that divisions are necessary for a conference to stage a championship game in football. This is not the case with any other team sport. Last year the SEC scrapped the divisional system in basketball to ensure competitive balance, why would they come back to it?
It’s true that imbalances between divisions can and will happen in any sport, but a 14-team football conference NEEDS (emphasizing, not shouting) divisions to crown a champion. Basketball and (all?) other non-football sports do not because all or almost all of the teams play each other in the regular season, and then all teams, at least in theory, can win the conference tournament. Divisions are necessary in football mainly because of the comparatively short season. It’d be one thing if one division dominated the other consistently, but (as you mentioned) the pendulum of SEC football shifts between divisions regularly.
That was in response to Mr. Apples. Forgot to hit the reply button.
The sec is still working on the schedule, they have to get all those div 1aa and div2 teams on the home teams schedules, pretty soon they will only play 4 conference games and 8 games against the charlestons states of the world. what a bunch of perverts!
atm i mean tex am switched to sec cause they were tired of losing to big brother and getting blown out by the okies, i remember one year they lost like 77 to 3 !