Should the SEC do away with divisions? Interesting article..

Posted on: February 20, 2020 at 13:13:48 CT

"Why the SEC needs to scrap divisions, and more Week 6 thoughts
Oct 4, 2019
Bill Connelly
ESPN Staff Writer

You've probably heard by now that Auburn and Florida, who meet in Gainesville on Saturday, have played each other only once in the past 11 seasons. This is a long-standing rivalry, and this will be the eighth time the programs meet as top-10 teams, but they barely play anymore.

Georgia won't play Texas A&M for the first time as a conference rival until later this season. LSU won't visit Missouri for the first time until 2023, 11 years after A&M and Mizzou joined the SEC.

This barely qualifies as a conference.

Florida head coach Dan Mullen said as much last week, noting that Florida has more games scheduled against USF than Mississippi State. "I think it's an injustice for the kids. We should mix those games up, and you should play more teams from the West and get the opportunity to play more SEC games." When you have 14 SEC teams playing eight-game conference schedules, and when seven of those eight spots are occupied by the same seven teams every year (six division foes, plus one permanent inter-division rival), you're barely going to play the other six teams.


Florida and Auburn haven't played since 2011. We have a plan for fix that. Scott Cunningham/Getty Images
Going from eight conference games to nine would put an extra inter-division foe into the rotation and assure you're playing everybody twice in six years. However, the SEC probably isn't going to move to nine-game schedules anytime soon -- the current structure works out pretty well for the league, which has placed at least one team (and on two occasions, two teams) in the national title game in 12 of the past 13 seasons.

Luckily, there's an even better way. It doesn't even require adding a conference game, and it would serve the additional purpose of solving occasional problems with unequal divisions.

Just ban divisions altogether.

I've written about this before, but it has picked up steam in the run-up to Auburn-Florida. Let's walk through the basics of what we'll call the conference pod structure.

1. Instead of divisions, each team has a set of three permanent rivals. We have taken to calling them pods. Having three for each team satisfies most rivalry needs, as you'll see below.

2. You play your three permanent rivals every year, and you rotate between the other 10. Home-and-homes against five of them for two years, then home-and-homes against the other five the next two years. Within a student's four years on campus, you have played everyone in the league at least twice. Now that's a conference.

This same structure, by the way, would work beautifully for the ACC, which also plays eight-game conference schedules, doesn't even use geography for its divisions and features even more divisional imbalance than the SEC. And while the three-five structure works with perfect symmetry, it would work for conferences with nine-game conference schedules, too. (Hello, Big Ten.)

A simulation

To see how this would work in the future, I looked to the past. I simulated how it might have played out had the SEC adopted this structure from the moment it became a 14-team league in 2012.

Here are the permanent rivalries I chose:

Hypothetical SEC rivalry pods
Alabama: Auburn, LSU, Tennessee
Arkansas: Missouri, Ole Miss, Texas A&M
Auburn: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi State
Florida: Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, South Carolina
Kentucky: Mississippi State, Missouri, Vanderbilt
LSU: Alabama, Ole Miss, Texas A&M
Mississippi State: Auburn, Kentucky, Ole Miss
Missouri: Arkansas, Kentucky, Texas A&M
Ole Miss: Arkansas, LSU, Mississippi State
South Carolina: Florida, Georgia, Vanderbilt
Tennessee: Alabama, Florida, Vanderbilt
Texas A&M: Arkansas, LSU, Missouri
Vanderbilt: Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee

For balanced scheduling, I referenced teams' five-year average SP+ ratings (2007-11, which can be found at Football Outsiders). I used as many real-life games as possible, and for the new matchups that didn't actually happen, I kept things simple and determined the winner by who would be favored by that year's SP+ ratings. (No, this wasn't intended to be perfectly scientific.)

Here are the results.

2012 Standings
Alabama (7-1, 11-1)
Georgia (7-1, 11-1)
Florida (6-2, 10-2) (-1 win from real life)
LSU (6-2, 10-2)
Texas A&M (6-2, 10-2)
South Carolina (5-3, 9-3) (-1 win)
Vanderbilt (5-3, 8-4)
Ole Miss (3-5, 6-6)
Mississippi State (3-5, 7-5) (-1 win)
Arkansas (3-5, 5-7) (+1 win)
Auburn (2-6, 5-7) (+2 wins)
Tennessee (2-6, 6-6) (+1 win)
Missouri (1-7, 4-8) (-1 win)
Kentucky (0-8, 2-10)

SEC championship game: Alabama vs. Georgia

The title game doesn't change, but we see some shifts further down in the standings. From the start of the league's 14-team existence, the West has been far stronger than the East, and we see here that West teams pick up a net two wins.


2013 Standings
Alabama (7-1, 11-1)
Auburn (6-2, 10-2) (-1 win)
Mississippi State (6-2, 9-3) (+3 wins!)
Missouri (6-2, 10-2) (-1 win)
Georgia (6-2, 9-3) (+1 win)
LSU (5-3, 9-3)
Texas A&M (5-3, 9-3) (+1 win)
South Carolina (5-3, 9-3) (-1 win)
Ole Miss (4-4, 8-4) (+1 win)
Vanderbilt (3-5, 7-5) (-1 win)
Florida (1-7, 2-10) (-2 wins)
Arkansas (1-7, 4-8) (+1 win)
Tennessee (1-7, 4-8) (-1 win)
Kentucky (0-8, 2-10)

SEC championship game: Alabama vs. Auburn

Here, we encounter what some might consider a drawback of the no-divisions structure: immediate rematches. Auburn finished the 2013 regular season with maybe the most dramatic pair of wins in college football's 150-year history, beating Georgia via Ricardo Louis' miraculous deflected touchdown, then beating Alabama via Chris Davis' 109-yard missed field goal return.

In this reality, the Kick Six merely sets up a rematch the next week. Missouri, which would have otherwise won a tiebreaker due to its road win over Georgia, ends up screwed by the Kick Six, not Alabama, which would have been the odds-on favorite to win the rematch and play in the BCS title game.

2014 Standings
Alabama (7-1, 11-1)
Mississippi State (6-2, 10-2)
Missouri (6-2, 9-3) (-1 win)
LSU (5-3, 9-3) (+1 win)
Georgia (5-3, 8-4) (-1 win)
Texas A&M (4-4, 8-4) (+1 win)
Auburn (4-4, 8-4)
South Carolina (4-4, 7-5) (+1 win)
Ole Miss (4-4, 8-4) (-1 win)
Florida (4-4, 6-5)
Arkansas (3-5, 7-5) (+1 win)
Tennessee (2-6, 5-7) (-1 win)
Kentucky (2-6, 5-7)
Vanderbilt (0-8, 3-9)

SEC championship game: Alabama vs. Mississippi State

Missouri, which won the real-life East in both 2013 and 2014, instead narrowly misses out on the title game twice in a row, this time due to a head-to-head loss to Mississippi State. The Bulldogs, who spent a chunk of the season unbeaten and No. 1 in the country, get a late shot at redemption after faltering late in the year.




Ole Miss (7-1, 10-2) (+1 win)
Alabama (7-1, 11-1)
Georgia (6-2, 10-2) (+1 win)
LSU (6-2, 9-2) (+1 win)
Arkansas (6-2, 8-4) (+1 win)
Florida (5-3, 8-4) (-2 wins)
Auburn (4-4, 8-4) (+2 wins)
Tennessee (4-4, 7-5) (-1 win)
Texas A&M (4-4, 8-4)
Mississippi State (3-5, 7-5) (-1 win)
Kentucky (2-6, 5-7)
South Carolina (1-7, 3-9)
Vanderbilt (1-7, 3-9) (-1 win)
Missouri (0-8, 4-8) (-1 win)

SEC championship game: Ole Miss vs. Alabama

In this reality, the amazing Hunter Henry Game doesn't cost Ole Miss its first spot in the conference title game. Meanwhile, Georgia and LSU each fare better than in real life, making the Mark Richt and Les Miles firings even more awkward than they already were.

2016 Standings
Alabama (8-0, 12-0)
LSU (6-2, 8-3) (+1 win)
Texas A&M (5-3, 9-3) (+1 win)
Auburn (5-3, 8-4)
Florida (5-3, 8-3) (-1 win)
Tennessee (4-4, 8-4)
Georgia (4-4, 7-5)
Mississippi State (4-4, 6-6) (+1 win)
Arkansas (3-5, 7-5)
Ole Miss (3-5, 6-6) (+1 win)
South Carolina (3-5, 6-6)
Kentucky (2-6, 5-7) (-2 wins)
Vanderbilt (2-6, 5-7) (-1 win)
Missouri (2-6, 4-8)

SEC championship game: Alabama vs. LSU

The West picks up four net wins here, and a Florida team that won the East in real life, instead finishes fifth in the conference. Meanwhile, with fewer games against the worst teams in the conference, the Mark Stoops era is really struggling to get off the ground. He has yet to make a bowl.

2017 Standings
Auburn (7-1, 10-2)
Alabama (7-1, 11-1)
Georgia (7-1, 11-1)
LSU (6-2, 9-3)
Ole Miss (5-3, 8-4) (+2 wins)
Mississippi State (5-3, 9-3) (+1 win)
Missouri (4-4, 7-5)
South Carolina (4-4, 7-5) (-1 win)
Texas A&M (4-4, 7-5)
Arkansas (2-6, 5-7) (+1 win)
Florida (2-6, 3-8) (-1 win)
Kentucky (2-6, 5-7) (-2 wins)
Vanderbilt (1-7, 5-7)
Tennessee (0-8, 4-8)

SEC championship game: Auburn vs. Alabama

Here, in addition to immediate rematches, we encounter another potential problem with pods: awkward tie-breakers. Auburn, Alabama and Georgia all finish 7-1, but Alabama and Georgia didn't play each other. Auburn finishes first with wins over both teams, but the Bama/Georgia tie pretty much has to be broken by who has the higher CFP ranking. (Alabama was fifth at this point in real life, Georgia sixth.)

The way this plays out, though, Georgia probably still makes the CFP at 11-1 in addition to the Auburn-Bama winner.

2018 Standings
Alabama (8-0, 12-0)
Georgia (7-1, 11-1)
Auburn (6-2, 10-2) (+3 wins!)
Kentucky (6-2, 10-2) (+1 win)
Texas A&M (5-3, 8-4)
LSU (5-3, 9-3)
Mississippi State (4-4, 8-4)
Florida (4-4, 8-4) (-1 win)
Missouri (3-5, 7-5) (-1 win)
Ole Miss (2-6, 6-6) (+1 win)
South Carolina (2-6, 5-7) (-2 wins)
Vanderbilt (2-6, 5-7) (-1 win)
Tennessee (1-7, 4-8) (-1 win)
Arkansas (1-7, 3-9) (+1 win)

SEC championship game: Alabama vs. Georgia

The title game matchup doesn't change, but one-loss Georgia (which still loses to LSU) gets a pretty stiff challenge from both an Auburn team dealing with a far lighter conference schedule and a Kentucky team that finally found its rhythm (and, in this example, lost to only Tennessee and LSU).

Over the course of seven seasons, the West teams have benefited as you would expect, gaining a net 26 wins. Auburn and Arkansas each score six extra conference wins, and Ole Miss gains five, while the East's Florida loses eight, Missouri loses five, and Vandy and South Carolina lose four each.

This simulation pretty clearly spells out the pluses and minuses to a pod approach.

Plus: Everybody plays everybody frequently.

Minus: Some games that are awfully important to certain fan bases -- Arkansas-LSU, Tennessee-Georgia, etc. -- are still played frequently but no longer annually.

Plus: The schedules within the conference are far more balanced, to some teams' benefit and others' detriment. (This makes certain annual coaching hot seat conversations play out quite differently, from Derek Dooley reaching a bowl and maybe not getting fired from Tennessee in 2012, to Stoops or Vandy's Derek Mason reaching fewer bowls and perhaps finding trouble more quickly.)

Minus: The tiebreaker process will end up breaking ties among teams that didn't play each other. That's awkward and potentially unsatisfying.

Plus: Conference title games are far more likely to pit the best and second-best teams against each other, not best and fifth-best.

Minus: If you're not a fan of immediate rematches (but want to keep all the key rivalry games, such as the Iron Bowl, on Thanksgiving weekend, when they should be), you might be occasionally unhappy with the title game pairings.

It's important to note, the positives far outweigh the negatives. I'll trade occasionally awkward tiebreakers for a greater sense of rivalry, balance and fairness.

The SEC was the first FBS conference to implement a conference title game. Though doubters were legion at first, it benefited the conference greatly and became commonplace within the sport. The league could choose to make a similarly progressive move right now; among all the other benefits, it would get Auburn to Gainesville quite a bit more often."

Oz thoughts on this. I think this proposal has merit. It certainly enhances conference cohesion. It evens out the scheduling overall. The big change I think will come with the SEC championship game. There is a strong possibility rematches will be from the same pods. At least the rematch would not be in the college play offs.

Thoughts anyone?

This is likely going to be brought up in the SEC meeting this spring.

Edited by Ozland Tiger at 13:30:42 on 02/20/20