At this point, it appears that Missouri is going to be team 14 in the SEC. That isn't so much my concern (those who read this blog regularly know I have pretty much avoided this round of realignment in favor of other off-field stories and the games themselves). My concern is what this will do to the SEC schedule in the future. Right now, the SEC is split into two divisions with one protected rival in the other divisions. That means there are six permanent opponents with five schools rotating among the remaining two places. Missouri throws everything off.
The first Missouri problem: Re-alignment
Missouri and Texas A&M are both western schools. Given that NCAA rules say a full round robin must be played in each division to keep the championship game, somebody has to move to the East. At this point, there are two options: send Missouri all the way to the East, or move the Easternmost school in the West to the East (that would be Auburn). If the schedules can be figured out to keep rivalries intact, I favor shipping Auburn to the East.
Problem two: saving rivalries while still playing other league members
If we send Auburn to the East, then there is a problem: the 8-game conference schedule won't allow for rivalries to be protected. In particular, Alabama will lose its annual cross-divisional game against Tennessee (or, heaven forbid, the Iron Bowl against Auburn). Both of those games need to be saved on the schedule and it would be nice to regain some of the rivalries lost when the SEC split into divisional play. For example, Auburn will regain its former yearly games against Tennessee and Florida by switching divisions while only losing the LSU and Arkansas games and neither of those schools were traditional rivals before the divisional split in 1992.
With this in mind, the SEC needs to move to a 9-game conference schedule. That would allow for six divisional games and three cross-divisional games. Those cross-divisional games should come with two of them locked each year. It would look something like this: team – rivals
EAST
Auburn – Alabama, LSU
Florida – LSU, Mississippi St.
Georgia – Ole Miss, Texas A&M
Kentucky – Missouri, Mississippi St.
South Carolina – Arkansas, Missouri
Tennessee – Alabama, Arkansas
Vanderbilt – Ole Miss, Texas A&M
WEST
Alabama – Auburn, Tennessee
Arkansas – South Carolina, Tennessee
LSU – Florida, Auburn
Missouri – Kentucky, South Carolina
Ole Miss – Vanderbilt, Georgia
Mississippi St. - Kentucky, Florida
Texas A&M – Georgia, Vanderbilt
Admittedly, this isn't ideal in some cases, but it saves the rivalries that need saving (Alabama-Tennessee/Auburn, Auburn-LSU) and regains many former yearly games that were lost either during the 1992 expansion of when the schedules were redone taking one of the permanent games away in 2002 (Auburn-Tennessee, Auburn-Florida, Florida-Mississippi St., Georgia-Ole Miss). The flaw, of course is what to do with the new teams. Texas A&M and Missouri have little history with any of the Eastern teams. Especially in A&M's case, I can't see them being too keen on playing Vanderbilt every year. For Missouri, they likely won't want South Carolina as a permanent opponent, but Kentucky seems to be a good fit given proximity (nearly a border clash with only a small sliver of Illinois between them). As for Georgia, there is no natural fit in the West with Auburn moving East. They need to have a stronger opponent than Ole Miss for their second game, so A&M it is.
Problem 3: teams don't play each other often
There isn't much to be done here, but the SEC should move away from the current home and home approach to rotating games. What it should be is school rotates on, home game. Next time it rotates on, road game. Do this and rotate every season. With that, a player who stays four years at a school will only miss one opponent in the league. Once again it's not ideal, but what is with 14 teams (though 14 works better than 16)
So with the problems pointed out, does anyone else out there have a better solution? If so I would love to see/hear it.
As a Mizzou fan, I'm still unsure about the possible move to the SEC. But I amc urious about how the schedule would work. I would much prefer for MU to playin the West. I also much prefer to play 9 league games. Basically I like what you have set-up here if Missouri does leave the Big 12.
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