I had to blog and run yesterday afternoon, so I didn’t get to spend time on the real story about next year’s SEC scheduling. Fortunately, Jon Solomon does a fine job of laying that out here. What’s striking is how seat-of-the-pants the whole thing comes off as.
Today’s release of the 2013 SEC schedule shows those new “permanent” games aren’t happening next season. And it’s not clear if Arkansas-Missouri and South Carolina-Texas A&M will become permanent starting in 2014 or if that will ever happen.
“That’s possible they’ll be permanent, but not definite,” SEC Executive Associate Commissioner Mark Womack said. “We’ll continue to look at that and see what issues that may create going forward.”
Womack said the change occurred due to the difficulty of finding a quality game for Texas A&M and Missouri on the final weekend. Instead, they’ll play each other Nov. 30, 2013, meaning South Carolina and Arkansas resume their annual cross-divisional game they’ve played since 1992.
“We’re trying not to have a team stuck out there without someone to play on that last weekend,” Womack said. “It’s harder to schedule nonconference games at the end of the schedule.”
Of course, most of what Womack and his cohorts struggle with would cease to be a problem if the conference’s decision makers would get their collective heads out of their asses and adopt a nine-game conference schedule. But that would make too much sense. Instead, we’re asked to keep hope alive.
Womack said he hopes this is the last “bridge” schedule before a 12-year schedule shows which teams rotate on and off annually.
For the SEC, that’s a plan.