SEC football fans must be excited about the transformation of a 16-team league into a no-division league in a few years.
With the expansion of the conference to 16 teams with the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, SEC football fans must embrace a world of no-division conference play.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Thursday that the conference looks forward to eliminating the two-section format in the near future. It may still be a few years before the Sooners and Longhorns join the league, but the move to get rid of the divisions feels like an inevitability. More importantly, the SEC will not adopt the four-team pod system, which is great.
This means that the SEC will almost certainly legislate a 3-6 model with three annual competitions for each team, as well as a rotation among the other 12 teams so that everyone plays home and home over a four-year period. The SEC has plenty of time to learn from other leagues about what’s good about no split, as well as areas where the split less model can be improved.
No matter when this happens, there will be way more good than bad from this step.
SEC Football: Greg Sankey says the conference is likely to clean up the divisions
To understand why the SEC would eliminate other sections, you must first understand why they were put in place. This all stems from NCAA regulations to allow conference tournament play. The SEC expanded to 12 teams in 1992 with the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina. Going into the divisions at the time, a title bout was created.
While the Big 12 and later ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 would all adopt a divisional format in the final years of the BCS, it was the Big 12 that somehow helped end it in the 1920s. This is because the Big 12 went from 12 teams to 10 in 2012. The league was not allowed to have a championship game, eliminating its potential chances for the playoffs. The Big 12 is cancelled, and you win big!
Since the Big 12 won its case for a championship game, where the league plays nine games in the regular season, it has paved the way for other leagues to go divisionless. The Pac-12 is playing without divisions this season, the ACC will switch to a lower division next year and the expectation is for the Big Ten and the SEC to follow. AAC from the set of five is already less split anyway.
So why is this such a big deal for SEC fans? Well, it does three things. First, the two best teams in the conference are allowed to meet in the title bout. In some years, the two best teams are of the same division. That seems to be the case in the SEC East this season as Georgia is undefeated and Tennessee’s only loss of the year is Georgia. Vols fans aren’t too happy…
The second thing non-division does is that it allows all the teams in the conference to play each other more regularly. In its current form, the 6-1-1 schedule is now obsolete. Each plays its other six members in the division, an opponent across divisions and one team from the other division annually. East teams don’t play western teams as often as they do.
Finally, if the SEC was smart, it would adopt the 3-6 format, meaning that each team would play three opponents annually, while the other 12 teams would rotate on a biennial basis. This will allow major competitions such as the Iron Bowl, Cocktail Party, Saturday Third in October, and the Egg Bowl to continue as annual traditions while allowing for other interesting showdowns to occur.
Ultimately, going down a lower division isn’t a good thing for the SEC, because it allows the best college football conference in the world to adapt quickly. If the annual rivalry becomes too lopsided or too stale, the league can focus on keeping things fresh and interesting. The best thing the SEC can do is take a look at how it works with the ACC starting next season. They can learn from acc mistakes.
As long as the top two teams are able to play in a championship annually, SEC football fans win.
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