and here's the article in its entirety...

Posted on: May 4, 2023 at 07:52:35 CT

for you poor folk:

"SEC should have its cake and make easy choice with football schedule format"

By Andy Staples
May 3, 2023

To truly understand the complexity of the choice the SEC faces in regard to its future scheduling, imagine you’re at a fine, white-tablecloth restaurant, and you’ve just finished your entree. Your server presents you with a dessert menu that contains exactly two options.

Red velvet cake: We flew your grandmother in yesterday, and she’s been working all day in the kitchen so you can have the perfect three-layer slice of nostalgia, smothered in cream cheese frosting. — $16

A giant pile of elephant poop: We brought in an elephant, and he pooped on a very large plate. — $5,000

On the surface, this seems like an incredibly easy choice. But look deeper, and you’ll see that it’s … an incredibly easy choice.

The SEC can choose a nine-game conference schedule that allows its teams to play every cherished rivalry on an annual basis and have all its teams face every team in the conference at least twice every four years. Teams would get three fixed opponents, and the other 12 would rotate through the schedule twice every four years.

From a viewership standpoint, this is a bonanza. It also will increase demand for season tickets as the variety of teams coming through increases from a scheduling format that has grown quite stale through the years. Did you see that crazy Georgia-Texas A&M game from Kyle Field? Of course, you didn’t. The Bulldogs haven’t visited the Aggies yet even though the teams have been in the same conference for 11 seasons.

Or the SEC can choose an eight-game conference schedule, which allows for one annual rivalry for each team and cycles the rest of the conference through twice every four years. In other words, Texas and Texas A&M would be in the same conference but would only play twice every four years because the Longhorns’ single annual rivalry slot would be occupied by Oklahoma. Also, Alabama–Tennessee and Auburn–Georgia — the games the SEC created the aforementioned stale model to protect after Texas A&M and Missouri joined the conference — would be relegated to twice every four years.

One option is every kind of awesome. One option is remarkably stupid.

And yet the eight-game model is still being paid lip service 16 months before the 16-team version of the SEC kicks off for the first time. This decision should have been made the day Oklahoma and Texas accepted their invitations in 2021, but the conference has delayed to placate loser thinking from the leaders of schools that fear a ninth game will hinder their ability to schedule games their fans don’t want to see anyway so they can reach six wins and go to a bowl that is probably sponsored by a power tool or a crypto scam.

The resistance isn’t coming from the schools that can compete for the SEC title. Once the College Football Playoff expands to 12 teams, those schools won’t fear a little more rugged schedule. Any 10-2 SEC team in that era will make the CFP. Some 9-3 SEC teams will.

Hopefully, when all the conference’s muckety-mucks convene for their annual meeting late this month on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, they’ll drown the eight-game idea once and for all. Because who watches last year’s Alabama-Tennessee game and says, “Well, we probably don’t need that kind of spectacle every year?” Who looks at the resumption of the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry and thinks, “It’s only the most anticipated game in America’s second-largest state by population; let’s skip it twice every four years?”

The conference hamstrung its own schedule for years — especially for teams in the East Division — to protect Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia. This is understandable. Tradition matters in the SEC. And last year’s game between the Crimson Tide and Volunteers at Neyland Stadium showed why that series can be magic even though Alabama had dominated it for more than a decade.

The nine-game schedule allows that tradition to be upheld while also providing the variety that the athletic directors who need to sell season tickets crave. Alabama and Georgia don’t need help selling tickets, but Georgia fans would love someone else to break up the Kentucky-Missouri-South Carolina-Vanderbilt monotony at Sanford Stadium. Tennessee doesn’t need help now, but it did a few years ago. Florida fans aren’t exactly pumped coming off a 6-7 season, but they probably would be more excited if the home schedule included Alabama, Texas or Oklahoma. Could this make Kentucky’s schedule harder? Sure. But, with apologies to Don Draper, that’s what the money is for.

Some old rivalries also can be rekindled. Arkansas has been in the SEC since 1992, but its fans never really found a true nemesis. The Razorbacks and LSU have played some great games. Bringing in Texas A&M brought back some Southwest Conference memories. But the one thing Arkansas fans love historically as much as calling the hogs is hating Texas. Having three fixed slots on the schedule allows Arkansas-Texas to be an annual game. If the game in 2021 in Fayetteville is any indication, that matchup on an annual basis could be a monster.

So please, SEC athletic directors and presidents, stop wasting time debating a topic in which one side deserves neither consideration nor respect. Just eat the damn cake and leave the elephant poop sitting on the menu.