South Carolina’s president says the SEC will go to a nine-game conference schedule in the wake of expanding to fourteen schools. That’s a win for the fans.
As an aside, this is kind of interesting:
… For a conference title game, the NCAA requires leagues to have balance in both divisions. With a 13-team league, the SEC would have been required to apply for a special waiver to hold the annual game in Atlanta.
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UPDATE: Hold that thought. Maybe they are just a bunch of greedy morons.
Get The Picture 
So Missouri is now in the Eastern division and will be on UGA’s schedule every year. Enjoy another town named Columbia with nothing much to do.
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Athens Ga. to Columbia, Mo. Drive time 13 hours.
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I spent a year there one day….
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Expect to see Mizzou in Athens next year. Hopefully in early September so that we can fully welcome them to the South.
This year is our 4 SEC home game year and next year would be our 3 SEC home game year. If we go to nine games, it will almost certainly work so that we play 4 home, 4 road, and Jax every year. That being said, Gators will be playing in Columbia, MO next year as this is their 3 SEC home game year and next year they will have 4 home SEC games without Mizzou.
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I hope you are correct about the 4 home 4 away and 1 game in Jax schedule for the Dawgs going forward Dawgaholic. It makes sense and is a way to even out the inequity about UGA having only 3 SEC home games in even numbered years historically. The way UGA has been treated by the SEC in past years gives me no comfort that this will actually be the case, though.
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They’d have to treat UF unfairly too. I doubt both us and UF get a bad outcome when they can easily make us both happy. Also, it prevents Mizzou from ever having both of us on the road in the same year.
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No. Florida playing in Jacksonville is about the same as Florida playing in Gainesville. Those years where the Gators would get 3 SEC games in Gainesville and 1 SEC game in Jacksonville with 5 SEC away games would be more than offset by the advantage they would get in those other years: 5 SEC home games plus 1 SEC game in Jacksonville and only 3 SEC away games. I’d be willing to bet that Foley would WANT the SEC to chose this latter formula because of the huge advantage the Gators would have every other year.
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Was it just like playing in Gainesville this year?
The difference is we ride in a plane and they ride on a bus.
I’ve been to 9 of the last 11 cocktail parties as well as numerous road games and neutral site games. This is a neutral site game – though not as “neutral” as when we have 50K in the GA Dome for an SECC game. The cocktail party is nothing like a road game at Auburn, Bama, LSU, UT, or even USCe. It’s even more neutral than when we have 40% of the fans at a road game at Tech.
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Dawgaholic, you have convinced me with the superiority of your logic. Let’s tell the SEC office that it perfectly OK with us for Florida to have 5 SEC home games and 1 SEC game in Jacksonville with only 3 SEC road games, EVERY OTHER YEAR. No problem there. No advantage to the Gators. Yeah, right.
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Yes, that “plane ride versus bus” logic is genius. All of 45 minutes in the air. Amazes me 100 twenty year old athletes can survive such a challenging trip an still win. Of course that doesn’tr take into account the return 45 minutes. You guys are making some brilliant points here.
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9 conference games means that in years where we play 5 road games it would have to be that UF would have to be considered the home team that year. That would give us 4 home, 4 road and 1 neutral game every year in conference. If they do it the other way we would be 3 home, 5 away and 1 neutral then 5 home, 3 away 1 neutral. One way would make every other year much harder or much easier depending on if we were home or away. Throw in the H&H with GT and if the scheduling is not done right we will almost have to get rid of the game in Jacksonville. Also playing 9 conference games plus GT is going to make it real hard to schedule any other good non-conference games.
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Not as long as it’s more profitable for the two schools to play in Jax than to go home-and-home.
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You may be right but if 5 conference away games, 1 in Jacksonville, one at GT in the same season = 5 home 7 away from home. It would take a huge number from Jacksonville to make up for the donor unrest about a season ticket package that only has 2 cupcakes and 3 in conference games. I am sure(hope) that McGarity has already got that worked out and I haven’t gone too deep into what year we are home/away with UF and GT but if not handled right it would be a mess.
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You are right DF17. If what you described above does come to pass and the UGA Athletic department doesn’t do something about the WLOCP then it will be exposed to the fans and alumni as nothing but a bunch of moneygrubbers who put $$ ahead of the fans and the team.
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I guess that part about missing Bama next year b/c of expansion was inaccurate? If this prez is right, a 9 game conf schedule is in order. Brutal. We should drop Tech.
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We won’t drop Tech. However, we may lose our upcoming reunion with Clemson.
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Yep. That’s the game that has to go.
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Hell no we aren’t dropping Tech. We’ve been kicking their ass.
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How many conference games were there when SEC teams played 10 games a year?
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Six I believe?
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If we go to nine conference games, then there would be no reason that you couldn’t move Auburn and/or Alabama east and still preserve both the Iron Bowl and the Alabama-Tennessee game. No need to put Mizzou in the East.
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Good point. That was the basic choice, either add Mizzou to the East in order to preserve existing rivalries or go to 9-game SEC schedule. There’s no need to do both. Maybe Mizzou in the East is just a temporary thing while they work out the longterm scheduling.
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No, that’ s wrong H-Town, the extra conference game would help incorporated the new team in your own division. You will now play 6 division games and 3 cross division games. 1 of the cross division games would be constant and 2 would be rotating. If Auburn were in the East, Bama would play Auburn as their constant, thus, UT would have to be a rotating team on their schedule, which would end that rivalry. It just didn’t work out without radically changing the schedules.
If you went to 2 constants from the other divisions (they way we originally scheduled from ’92-’02), you’d have like 8 years in between playing some teams from the other division.
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I love the last line of that article:
“The president also guaranteed USC would keep its annual matchup with Arkansas.”
Sort of like, “Oh by the way, we’ll still play Arkansas, I guess.” Can you imagine that attitude from McGarity about Auburn?
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Until the mid sixties the SEC was much more like a Confederation than a true conference. Teams played anywhere from 4 to 6 conference games. When Tech withdrew, the two real powerbrokers in SEC football were Bear Bryant and General Neyland. They are the ones who brought in a true 6 game schedule for all schools. They also cancelled a couple of traditional old rivalries..specifically the Georgia-Bama game which had kicked off the season many times.
Bryant had a lot of hate for this state…the bitterness of the Tech series with Darwin Holt and Chick Granning and Bobby Dodd and Furman Bisher. Then, there was the Saturday Evening Post story on the Bear and Wally Butts fixing the UGA-Bama games. From that point on, we were only going to play Bama on a rotating schedule.
There was also a young, new coach at Georgia that the Bear might have wanted to avoid as much as possible.
I support the 9 game conference schedule, but I hope it does not cause cancellation of the Ohio State and Clemson series.
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Then, there was the Saturday Evening Post story on the Bear and Wally Butts fixing the UGA-Bama games.
Which Bisher, I vaguely recall, wrote?
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Inaccurately wrote. Butts lost his lawsuit on a legal technicality but the AJC paid Bryant $100,000 to settle which was a whopping amount in those days.
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Shame we lost that series, though. The ’65 flea-flicker game was Dooley’s first signature win and, until Lindsay Scott, held forth as the most elictrifying play in UGA history.
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Where’s the love for Appleby to Washington?
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The Greatest Libel Ever Sold, as one of my journalism professors described it.
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So, Buffalo, Florida Atlantic or Georgia Southern? Who is coming off next year’s schedule?
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FAU. Buffalo is set as the opener, and they won’t cancel Southern. The only way they cancel Buffalo is if they start the season with an SEC game.
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Particularly since H.Schnellenberger is out as the FAU Owls coach at the end of the season. He had been Richt’s coach at the U.
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THe MAC has played thier title game with an unbalanced divisional structure. It would have been done.
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Hmmm. Nine conference games + Tech. Doesn’t leave much room for a home and home with any other BCS teams without making the schedule a killer (Clemson likely out for 2013?). Seems kind of a shame and something that most of the other SEC schools (without OOC, in-state rivalries) don’t have to deal with. Of course, the annual game in Jacksonville adds another layer of scheduling difficulty.
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The SEC will be adding 2 more teams within the next 2 years, bet on it. Therefore the SEC had to go to a 9 conference game schedule sooner or later.
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I disagree with the “greedy but not stupid” title for this thread, Senator. At least some of the SEC member university Presidents are both greedy and stupid. Mike Adams is a prime example.
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“Maybe they are just a bunch of greedy morons.”
Slive orders @SECPRGuy to jerk choke chain on Pastides for unauthorized talking. Thus far, Pastides has proven himself to be hard to train so he will have to learn the hard way.
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All this makes me a little nervous since we have such a good thing going. 8 games with only two cross divisional games (only one rotating) is touble too. We would slowly start to lose some of the identity of the conference since so many years would pass without teams playing each other. The 9 game schedule is going to be a headache to make with buying out current non conference opponents, and keeping teams with non conference traditional rivals happy (Clemson, FSU, Ga Tech).
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