The Problem With SEC Football Scheduling And How To Fix It

Paul Abell-USA TODAY Sports

The annual SEC meetings were met with anticipation and fervor, as the SEC was expected to work on the 2014 and 2015 football schedules with a new scheduling system to meet the new needs of the league after the addition of Texas A&M and Missouri last year. Many plans were discussed, such as subtracting a non-conference game to make a nine-game conference schedule, eliminating the permanent cross-division rival games, or even a combination of the two to have three cross-division opponents each year.

Instead, the meetings ended with no vote taken at all during the meetings on any issues, and the decision was made to keep the current system for the 2014 and 2015 seasons. The 2016 season will be discussed next year and SEC commissioner Mike Slive hopes to have a decision on this by then. The SEC coaches voted earlier 13-1 to keep the current eight-game conference schedule, with Alabama head coach Nick Saban bearing the lone dissenting opinion.

Saban believes a nine-game schedule would make the teams in the conference much more appealing. He believes playing more good opponents gives you more opportunities to succeed, even if you lose a game. Saban also referred to Georgia in his comments:

"“When we have six teams at the end of the season last year in the top 10 and other teams that are vying to get in the championship game – and then to think the team that loses our championship game wouldn’t have gotten into the final four if we’d have one – that’s not taking strength of schedule into consideration at all. It’s taking how many games you lose into consideration.” -Nick Saban"

His reference to Georgia does bring up an excellent point when if comes to future scheduling. If we started the four-team playoff last year instead of the current BCS system, but the teams were selected the same way, Georgia would have been left out of the hunt for the championship. The team had fantastic wins last season and fought tooth-and-nail against the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship. So why should they miss the field if they were a successful screen pass away from winning the game?

It turns out Georgia got a good draw last year in the SEC scheduling. When the new additions of Texas A&M and Missouri were announced, the scheduling was still being done under the old system: Play all division opponents, plus a rotating cross-division opponent and one cross-division rival. Georgia didn’t have to face Alabama or LSU last last year, giving them a manageable schedule.

The weak schedule, however, was ultimately their downfall. They only faced three top 25 opponents and lost to two of them; Alabama and South Carolina. If they had faced LSU and more opponents in general in the top 25 and had won, their case for a BCS bowl would have been a solid one. But instead, the old SEC schedule ended up preventing the Bulldogs from doing that.

If the 6-1-1 schedule system continues into 2014 and 2015, the SEC is really killing an opportunity to take over the new playoff system, which is expected to begin in 2014. You might get one of your teams in, but wouldn’t it be great if you saw two SEC teams in the field of four? That won’t happen when two of your best teams from each division play in the SEC Championship game.

The best way to solve it is to expand to a nine-game conference schedule. Why? Success breeds success. The SEC is the best conference in America with many of their teams making the BCS Top 25 year after year. So why not have more opportunities to play each other more often?  You lose a non-conference game, but many teams can stand to lose a Coastal Carolina off their schedule.

A nine-game schedule would also be a fantastic stepping stone into the four-team playoff. So far, the selection committee has only revealed a few factors they will consider, but they say they will consider a team’s regular season, but not necessarily conference or non-conference record. So, with more games against teams in the best conference in the land, you create more opportunities to win big games and more opportunities to come back should you lose one of those games.

That’s the kind of notion that Alabama has been running on these last two years on their road to the national title. The Crimson Tide had five opportunities to win big games in the 2011 and 2012 season. They lost to LSU in 2011 and to Texas A&M in 2012, but their back-loaded schedule kept Alabama in the hunt and ultimately propelled them to the BCS National Championship game (along with meltdowns from the Pac-12 and Big 12 in both years).

The fact remains that SEC football will stick to their tradition and go with the same schedule. Only they are trying to fit the same size gear into a bigger clock. Yeah, it will still tell the time, but it won’t run forever.

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