Scheduling the Southeastern Conference

The SEC recently announced that they are forgoing the 9-Game conference schedule in favor of forcing the constituent institutions to schedule at least one team from one of the other power conferences (Big Ten, Big XII, PAC-12, ACC).

While I approve of this move in theory, the truth is it only affects four schools for this upcoming year (Miss. State, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M). Georgia plays Georgia Tech every year. Florida plays Florida State every year. South Carolina plays Clemson every year. The biggest possibilities to come from this self-imposed requirement could be the revitalization of the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry…a feud that the Longhorns allowed to die because they didn’t want to associate with A&M any longer. Perhaps, though, this new rules leads to more interesting match-ups.

The SEC is already highly involved in kickoff classic games like in Atlanta and Dallas. There was talk recently of Tennessee and Virginia Tech playing in game in the infield of Bristol Motor Speedway. If the leagues play this correctly, we could see games that we’ve either never seen or haven’t seen in a long time. Alabama vs Oregon? Georgia vs Michigan? USC vs USC (South Carolina vs Southern Cal)? Florida vs Notre Dame? Stanford vs LSU? Oklahoma vs Auburn? The possibilities are myriad (not endless, unfortunately).

The SEC is doing all of this because of the nation’s knock against the conference for scheduling too many “cupcakes.” We’ve discussed these cupcake games at length in the past, noting that quite often the smaller school is using the payoff to fund a large portion of its athletic budget. A prime example involves a “cupcake” school that played Oklahoma State and Florida State, losing both games by a combined score of 139-0. The Savannah State Tigers, though they took quite a beating, earned nearly 20% of their total athletic budget off just those two games. That’s why the “cupcakes” like to play the big boys. It’s a nice payday for the school, it usually involves national exposure of some kind, and it also gives them a chance at quite an upset (Appalachian State beating Michigan; Georgia Southern beating Florida).

So what if the SEC, in an attempt to boost their supposed failures in the “strength of schedule” department, reached out to another power conference, like the Big Ten, to set up an SEC-Big Ten Challenge on one Saturday this fall. Here’s how I imagine it going down.

The rules are simple: The teams from the SEC play the entire Big Ten. The games would be split, with seven played in Big Ten stadiums and seven played in SEC stadiums. Schedule makers would be tasked with getting as close as possible to having #1 match up with #1. If we used last year’s final standings, these are the match ups we would see:

In Big Ten Stadiums:

Missouri at Ohio State

South Carolina at Iowa

Georgia at Penn State

Texas A&M at Michigan

Ole Miss at Northwestern

Tennessee at Purdue

Kentucky at Rutgers

In SEC Stadiums:

Michigan State at Auburn

Wisconsin at Alabama

Nebraska at LSU

Minnesota at Vanderbilt

Indiana at Mississippi State

Illinois at Florida

Maryland at Arkansas

That would at least be compelling TV. Just look at some of those match-ups. Imagine Auburn’s slash and burn offense against the stingiest defense in the game in Michigan State. Two historic programs battle it out as Georgia visits Happy Valley against Penn State. Illinois comes to Florida, Texas A&M goes to Michigan. The commercialization alone would be intense for both conferences.