Permanent Opponents & Division Realignment

Been thinking about this lately. Divisions shouldn't be necessary. Add OKST and UNC. Permenant schedule based on traditional rivalries and proximity. See the following four teams for example. Games played in parentheses.

LSU
MSU (102)
OM (96)
Bama (77)
Ark (56)
A&M (51)
AU (43)
OKST (1)

BAMA
MSU (96)
UT (94)
Van (83)
LSU (77)
AU (70)
OM (60)
Ark (22)

UF
UGA (90)
AU (82)
UK (62)
Van (45)
UT (41)
SC (32)
UNC (10)

UGA
AU (116)
UF (90)
UK (65)
SC (64)
UT (40)
UNC (23)
A&M (5)

Use SEC record, BCS ranking, and head-to-head record to determine the two teams to play for SEC Championship.

 

You skeered to travel? Hmmm, that makes you a bonified SEC fan.

 

I hate that argument - SOS wise, SEC is always at the top. It's not our fault USC has to travel to find competition.

And to be clear, I was proposing above to eliminate eastern and western divisions and simply tailor the 7 permanent opponents to each team as best you can. I came up with permanent opponents for each team, I think pretty fairly. I think it effectively increased traditional rivalries by ~200 years.

 

What is your source for this?

 

I was referring to the "new" west that I put together - LSU, Ark, A&M. There are several teams in the "east" higher than Ark. I think LSU is 3rd in income according to Forbes for the year of 2009. I thought I posted a link somewhere in here.

EDIT: Yep... http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/01/26/whos-making-money-in-sec-football/

 

As far as putting Missouri in the West for geographic reasons, they are fairly equidistant to both divisions, so keep them in the East for balance.

 

Looking at the map makes me wonder how good a superconference would be if the SEC and Big 12 merged together.

 

So you think having divisions is necessary? I'm floating the idea of eliminating divisions and create each team's schedule based on tradition and proximity within the confines of conference scheduling.

 

Tennessee may be a joke now, but they were an also-ran at the end of Fulmer's tenure and mostly irrelevant. That's better? If Tennessee can find themselves, I'm sure they can become a player again. I don't know if that possibility existed under Fulmer.