is how convoluted all the eight-game schedule variations turn out to be.
Bill Connelly has my vote for becoming the next SEC Director of Scheduling. He’s a helluva lot smarter than the people they’ve got fumbling over it now.
My head hurts.
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UPDATE: Elkon advises Mike Slive to get his head out of his ass and acknowledge how Larry Scott got the big bucks in the Pac-12’s TV deal.
Get The Picture 
The 6-2 model makes the most sense of anything I have seen.
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Senator, I understand your reasons for a 9 game schedule. Better home schedule, more competitive games, less cupcakes and all that jazz. But don’t you think there’s something to be said for keeping things in tact since the SEC has won six titles in a row? It’s just hard for me to see why we should go to 9 SEC games and the teams already push each other to the brink each and every week.
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Obviously, that should read “9 SEC games WHEN the teams…”.
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Nah.. I’d rather tear ourselves up in the conference play (which was common, even within the streak; LSU..) so we can go back to the argument of “our conference is better we just lose to each other because we’re sooo good” and give ourselves mythical national championships while rarely seeing the big game.
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Because all that matters is making me, the fan, happy, with 6-7 top 10 teams coming to Athens every year.. so what we only win half.. got my moneys worth!
/end rant
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If making sure that one SEC team makes the title game is your Holy Grail, perhaps the conference should return to its days of six-game conference schedules. A couple more Sun Belt snacks would be delicious.
Again, rumor from Destin this week is that Saban was pushing hard for a nine-game schedule. If it doesn’t bother him, why should it bother you?
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I want to win a natty championship. Regardless of the schedule you play you can’t avoid the every good team and get one of those.. now if UGA would have won 2 in the last 10 years, I might just wanna play the best.. but right now, they haven’t won one in my lifetime.
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Not saying it’s my holy grail, I’m saying that it’s hard to argue with the results. It’s right in line with what other conferences are doing, then why would we challenge ourselves more? We already have the most competitive conference in the country, why go above and beyond that? All this is cyclical, anyways. I’ve gotta think that the East is going to eventually look like the West does right now, Vandy and UK excluded.
I hadn’t heard that about Saban, but in a 9 game gauntlet of survival of the fittest, Alabama stands the best change to still come out on top due to their depth chart being run like an NFL franchise. Oh you’re not good enough to play valuable snaps for me, get ’em outta here, I’ll bring in another 30 freshmen that can. Not to mention, I still wonder how long Saban sticks around.
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My comment was directed at Jrod, but since you’ve brought it up…
Staying at eight games isn’t in line with what other conferences are doing. The Big 12 will play nine conference games. So will the Pac-12. The Big Ten is staying at eight, but adding that high-profile series with the Pac-12.
One pitched battle that hasn’t been fought yet is whether to reintroduce a SOS element into the BCS calculations. My bet is that the SEC fights that tooth and nail. If it loses, it will have little choice but to go to a nine-game schedule, or a deal similar to the Big Ten-Pac-12 arrangement.
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Call me crazy, but don’t all successful businesses tend to make their customers happy by providing an excellent product or EXPERIENCE?
I’ll never understand folks like you that think that the only way to enjoy college football is if you’re winning the national championship. There are so many other awesome things about college football that can be enjoyed that are getting destroyed in this whole realignment snafu.
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Make that a “contrived realignment snafu”. Good post.
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I am not sure the Senator fits that category of only enjoying CFB if it leads to a NC, but there are certainly many fans who do worship at that alter. I agree with you, CFB is outstanding without having a national champion, but I would like better matchups all season long with all teams scheduling competitive games. What does take away from CFB is the phoniness of false NC claims. It is the pursuit of this silliness that leads to the weak schedules. It has made watching TV at home on Saturdays in pursuit of a decent game superior to spending Saturdays in the stands (at least on all by 1-2 weekends per season, for me.) I don’t see any move to change this, and it won’t change until more fans vote with their feet.
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My comment was directed at Jrod. I honestly couldn’t care less about the national title and all that goes with it. There are so many other things that are enjoyable about college football that I worry we’re losing because of the pursuit of the national championship. I honestly would prefer going back to the pre-Bowl Coalition days where January 1st still meant something, but I may be in the minority on that one.
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Count me with you. Of course, we may both be a minority on that one- not sure, but I am sure that it is certainly the battle going on in CFB right now…
Honestly, I’m not trying to be elitist with this statement/question, but as the most dominate conference out there right now, why is the SEC trying to chase the tail of a MNC? Sure, a part of that dominance stems from the MNC’s but couldn’t the conference go into the opposite direction and strengthen itself? In other words, instead of jockeying for a place at the table of the four team, MNC table, I think it smarter to figure out how to make your product stronger to your fans and as a conference! Whether that being an expansion or contraction in teams I’m not sure but at this point I would concede that a contraction would be very difficult, if not impossible due to the perception it would cause the ones calling the shots.
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I’d rather stay at 8 and throw in some out of conference series like the Big 10 is doing, but I know I’m kidding myself to think we’d do that.
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I think that last proposal of the changing divisions is brilliant. Larger systems grow in complexity and require creative solutions to be maintained. If UGA played AU, UF, Tenn and one of UA/LSU, one of Ark/USCe and one of A&M/Mizzou every year I’d be ecstatic. The basic problem now is that we are locked into perpetual games with Vandy and Kentucky at the cost of never seeing the premier teams from the west. And it’s only an 8 game schedule, to keep the coaches happy. Traditional rivalries are maintained and the inventory of premier team games goes up. It’s way too good an idea to happen.
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Your proposal certainly isn’t unreasonable, but you’d have to do one of two things to make that happen:
1) Convince Slive and the boys that the Conference Championship Game needs to go away (too much money therefore no way in hell that happens)
2) Get the NCAA to change its language on the rules around having a conference championship game (changing bylaws at the NCAA makes changing the US tax code seem like a walk in the park)
I certainly like your idea, but it would take a lot of maneuvering by the suits in Birmingham and Indianapolis to make it happen.
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I wish I could take credit, but it’s whoever sent the email to Connelly who’s the mastermind. And this proposal doesn’t involve getting rid of the championship game at all. Admittedly it might be tricky to convince the NCAA that divisions that change on an annual basis are actually divisions.
It’s all pie in the sky, it’ll never happen. We know what the schedule announcement is going to be (6-1-1) and the only real suspense is whether the 1 rotating is a home and home with the same opponent or different ones. Either way it’s not going to be that appealling. We’ll be assured more UGA/Buffalo type games at the expense of more UGA/Bama or UGA/LSU games. Pity.
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Keeping away from competition in order to be in the NC Game? That’s not in this Dawg’s lexicon. It’s counter-productive to play a bunch of pussies and get wiped out when you have one competitive game. If you lucked out and won (like SC did last year) of what significance would hoisting a piece of glass be? A trophy of noncompetition? Wheedling your way to being a “Champion”? Like the Delanys try to do?
Yeah, that would make us all feel grand.
Not sure if Pink realizes that the Senator is not a proponent of 9 games. Several of us on here are proponents. But what the hell, all we want to see is good SEC games and fuck the rest of the college football world. That attitude was at Georgia in the 60s and forward. Let’s go back to playing against the world. While all the rest will fall in place, at worst would be those hard fought wins over like company that keep us warm through the rest of winter. This is college football, not a worship service that some make of it.
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Um… actually, I am a proponent of a nine-game conference schedule. Have you not been reading my posts lately?
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I believe that I’ve read you on both sides of the issue, but certainly I’ve come away with the belief that you favor 8. If “lately” means today, why yes, I see now that you are in favor of 9. If I missed your support for that number when several of us were pushing it, then I apologize for the false conclusion. I did like your use of the word “logic” in a heading .
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Cojones, it’s been plenty competitive for the past 6 national championship winners. And I’m not saying we have to win one every year, so please don’t lump me in with that. I was trying to present the other side of the argument. At this point, I’m not sure which I even prefer. I just know that the 8 game schedule has been successful for the SEC, so I can see why many are slow to change it. I honestly didn’t want to add Mizzou and TAMU to the mix and I dread the day when we add two more, which will further complicate this issue.
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If they adopt the 6-2 format, is there any reason we couldn’t schedule Auburn anyway? There are a lot of teams that don’t have natural rivalries in the conference and I get their position for the 6-2 format. There are only four teams that really have cross divisional rivalries, Georgia-Auburn and Tennessee-Alabama. They could still play each other, that just means it would be a ninth conference game. But maybe since it wasn’t scheduled by the SEC it wouldn’t count towards the conference record so they wouldn’t be at a disadvantage. I like the nine conference game format, but I just don’t see it happening for now.
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That’s what LSU’s AD suggested the other day. The question that begs is why would the SEC advocate that those four schools reduce two of the conference’s most storied rivalries to the level of non-conference games? You’d be cheapening your own brand.
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Thanks to the good Senator, this seems to be a site in which many of the hardy band of 9 game proponents virtually gather. As much as I hate to do it, I’m messaging the AJC and contacting the UGA Athletic Dept and SEC offices with my preference. I urge others to do the same. Maybe, just maybe, if we join our voices to the others out there, we’ll get the attention of these guys.
And there is one other pressure point–a big one. I will not attend any of the 3 cupcake games this year. If pocket book pressure is what it takes, then so be it.
I managed to wrest myself away from most of the virtually meaningless NFL regular season some years ago, and I’ve enjoyed the Sunday time with my family. Don’t even miss it now. Sure hope I don’t have to abandon CFB, too, but I don’t like wasting my time with boring, meaningless events.
For those of you handwringers who think playing a tough opponent weakens your chances of winning the MNC, how on Earth do you explain the SEC success of recent years? Great teams rise to the level of their toughest competition, then exceed it. If that’s not your mindset, why are you a football fan in the first place?
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Slaw Dawg- Have our genes crossed somewhere in the past and surfaced as one brain or are you, me and a few others on here just a bunch of old farts living in a wussie world? I too dropped the NFL except if I want to see a Dawg play. I don’t keep up with them until playoff because there isn’t a big difference enough to pick a team to follow (like the Bears used to be) that plays hell bent for leather..
Hope the genes question didn’t embarrass you.
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I’m notoriously embarrass-proof, as my kids will (with rolling eyes) attest. In any event, all wise, bold, True Dawgs must stick together in these troubled times!
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