The man in charge of SEC scheduling says there appears to be an early leader in the clubhouse.
The big questions in football scheduling starting in 2013: Who matches up with whom as permanent partners, how will other cross-division teams be rotated, and how far out will the SEC make this schedule? Templeton said the format appears to be the 6-1-1 model, meaning a team plays six divisional games, one permanent cross-division opponent and one rotating cross-division team. That’s what’s being used in 2012.
Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia should be safe as rivals. Kentucky-Mississippi State, South Carolina-Arkansas and LSU-Florida are permanent games that could be switched.
That makes coaches happy. And ADs trying to maximize the number of home games, too. The rest of us? Not so much. We fans are going to have long stretches between seeing most of the teams from the West.
And there’s still the networks to deal with, as well.
“I think what TV is interested in is how many quality games we’re going to have every Saturday,” Templeton said. “They’re more interested in what we’re doing the second week of the season and what are we doing the week before Thanksgiving with everybody either on an open date or nonconference games before their archrival games.”
CBS’ broadcast on the next-to-last weekend in 2011, Arkansas-Mississippi State, drew its second-lowest SEC rating of the season. The only other choices that day weren’t very appealing, either: Kentucky-Georgia, LSU-Ole Miss and Tennessee-Vanderbilt. The options on that day this season could be rough, too: Arkansas-Mississippi State, Ole Miss-LSU and Tennessee-Vanderbilt.
That sounds like the conference is hopeful it can make its broadcast partners happier by carefully parceling out the better matchups throughout the season. Maybe that’ll work, but it would be easier to boost inventory by adding a ninth conference game to the schedule. That won’t happen, though, without a big enough price tag attached.
Get The Picture 
As an SEC fan I’m just going to reveal my frustrastions with this now. THIS IS PATHETIC AND COWARDLEY of Mike Slive and the coaches. They can sit there and try to defend this scheduling all they want, but with a 12, that’s (twelve} game regular season there is no way one can convince me that there shouldn’t be two teams rotating in from the other half of the conference. The season length needs to increase by about three weeks so teams can schedule more off weeks to recuperate after a strong streach. besides, most of the bowl games that mean anything are a month after the season, when the teams are almost out of shape. The bowls would even be better because the teams would still be optimized mentally and physically.
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Nah. What you’re saying is good for CFB and the fans. They will never go for it.
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I don’t understand how McGarity can still support this model after seeing the decrease in donations and ticket orders this year.
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So we’ll see Ole Miss about every sixth year? And if they make it a home and home, about twice that long? And South Carolina will get Mississippi State as permanent rival and scream bloody murder about favoritism whenever the Bulldogs win more than 5 games?
SNAFU
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No doubt Auburn is angling to swap UGA for Vandy as its permanent rival. Would that free the Dawgs up for Ole Miss?
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We need the tv networks to offer money for a 9th game if we are ever going to get the only schedule that will work. The past year or so has left a bad taste in my mouth regarding college football.
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Think that’s caused by a virus sweeping the fanbase. I just caught it big time. Attitude adjustments end up getting me plowed. It’s looking like time to hang up the blogging finger.
I’m beginning to see why the senior suicide rate is climbing. There’s nothing left to heft a glass to.
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Senator, around midweek I read an article by Paul (?) Newberry(?), an AP writer, who advocates going to the 8-game playoff right now for the same reason that I do. He quotes Spurrious saying we are going to be there within 5 yrs, so, why not now? Simply written and reasoned. You may even like it.
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If we are in fact stuck with the 6-1-1 format I hope they at least drop the home and home requirement so we see teams like Bama and LSU every 5 years or so instaed of every 10 years.
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When I was in school teams played 10 games. As a practical matter that was not enough to allow every team to play every other team in the 10 member SEC (plus OOC games against rivals and a tune-up game) so each team played a conference schedule of 5 recurring games and 1 rotating game–a total of 6 SEC games. What we have now is better than that. Everybody needs to quit complaining.
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