SEC Unfiltered: SEC should focus on schedule instead of alignment

John Adams, Nashville Tennessean
·2 min read
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A nine-game conference football slate provides more opportunity for SEC members to play against each other, a priority for commissioner Greg Sankey.
A nine-game conference football slate provides more opportunity for SEC members to play against each other, a priority for commissioner Greg Sankey.

Welcome to SEC Unfiltered, the USA TODAY NETWORK's newsletter on SEC sports. Look for this newsletter in your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Today,  Knoxville News reporter John Adams takes over: 

Texas and Oklahoma are scheduled to join the SEC no later than 2025. That's expected to mark the end of divisional play in the conference.

Multiple source-driven stories have speculated the conference will discard the current divisional setup in favor of one giant, 16-team conference. The top two teams would play for the SEC championship.

I’m more interested in the schedule than the alignment.

Regardless of the format, you can be assured the SEC will be represented in the four-team College Football Playoff. In fact, it might have two teams as it did last season when Georgia beat Alabama for the national championship.

But let’s focus on the regular season rather than the playoff. Once the SEC expands to 16 teams, it should have a 10-game conference schedule. I realize that’s too much to ask. So, I would settle for increasing the league schedule from eight to nine games.

That way, you could preserve the longest rivalries and give fans a chance to see SEC newbies Oklahoma and Texas sooner. What’s the point of adding teams to the conference if fans must wait eight years to see them?

I would love to see the battle of UT’s between Texas and Tennessee. I’m also intrigued at the possibility of offensive-minded Oklahoma laying 100 points on Vanderbilt.

My preference for a 10-game conference schedule, which we had in the 2020 COVID-affected season, is also based on the games we won’t have to see.

Anyone looking forward to Tennessee vs. Ball State or Texas A&M vs. Sam Houston State on the first full weekend of games?

I don’t blame SEC schools for scheduling as many punching bags as they can. I just don’t want to watch non-conference games in which the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Conference heavyweights vs. Vanderbilt will quench my thirst for a possible record-setting runaway.

Although I’ve become accustomed to divisional play, the disparity between the stronger West and the lesser East has become tiresome. However, the addition of Oklahoma and Texas would enable the league to move Alabama and Auburn to the East and better balance the divisions.

But I’m not so passionate about a more balanced East and West alignment that I would object to the elimination of divisions.

Just give us a better regular-season schedule.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: SEC should focus on schedule instead of alignment