SEC Expansion: Scheduling for a 16-Team Superconference

by Wendell Barnhouse

A 16-team football conference presents several thorny issues. One of the obvious problems is basic – wins and losses.

While the start date of membership for Texas and Oklahoma is uncertain, adding the two best schools from the Big 12 Conference will make the Southeastern Conference first “super” conference with 16 members. Half of those schools figure to be in the top 25 rankings each season and those schools’ fan bases have national championship expectations.

With the College Football Playoff headed to an expanded 12-team field (arrival TBA), the SEC’s expansion has sparked the usual blather regarding how it could continue to dominate the sport. How many SEC teams will populate a 12-team bracket? Five? Six?

One aspect to that conjecture will depend on the selection criteria for a bigger playoff. It’s assumed the top four teams in the new CFP will receive first-round byes. The 28-teams that have participated in the four-team format have all been undefeated or had one loss.

It’s a given that two-loss teams will populate a 12-team bracket. If the SEC has over a quarter to half of the field, simple math dictates that a fifth or sixth CFP team from the SEC would almost certainly have three losses. While it’s preeminence in the sport has been well-established, adding heavyweights UT and OU will mean more teams with more losses. 

Assuming SEC configures into 8-team divisions, it could look like this:

West East
Oklahoma Alabama
Texas Auburn
LSU Florida
A&M Georgia
Ole Miss Tennessee
Mississippi State South Carolina
Arkansas Kentucky
Missouri Vandy

More assumptions: the SEC goes to 9 conference games. If it stays with 8 league games, the opportunities for all the schools to play each other and visit other campuses is reduced. 

A 9-game league schedule means 7 games against division rivals and 2 against teams from the other divisions. Figuring that each cross-division twosome is a home-and-home. With home-and-home format, it would take 8 years to work through one rotation of non-division foes.

So, based on those divisions, let’s look at how wins and losses would stack up, using the top 4 teams in the West. The following won-loss projections work no matter which team ends up on top of the division. This formula would work the same for the East Division’s top four – let’s say Alabama, Auburn, Georgia and Florida for argument’s sake. 

Assume OU goes undefeated against division foes, that means that Texas, A&M and LSU would be 0-1. Then, assume Texas goes 6-1 in the division, that means A&M and LSU would be 0-2. If LSU then beats A&M, it would be 5-2 and the Aggies would have 3 losses.

OU 7-0 UT 6-1 A&M 5-2
UT 1 loss A&M 2 losses LSU 3 losses
A&M 1 loss LSU 2 losses
LSU 1 loss

Let’s say that Texas beats OU but the Sooners win the rest of their division games to finish 6-1. The Longhorns could also finish 6-1 if it beats both A&M and LSU. And that would again mean the Aggies or the Tigers would finish with 3 losses.

OU 6-1 UT 6-1 A&M 5-2
A&M 1 loss A&M 2 losses LSU 3 losses
LSU 1 loss LSU 2 losses

These projections ignore the bottom four in the West Division and assume none would stage any upsets of the top four. That also means the bottom four would be saddled with 4 intra division losses. That foursome’s best team could finish 3-4 in intra division games and would need to win both its crossover games to finish above .500 in league play.

For both divisions, teams in the bottom half would be compelled to go 3-0 or 2-1 in their non-conference games. Assuming the minor bowls keep functioning, achieving 6 victories will be challenging for the bottom four teams in both divisions. And for at least two to four teams, Novembers will be playing out the schedule and waiting on that revenue check the following summer.

The cross-over games against the other division will obviously be crucial. The top four teams in the East won’t always go against the bottom four teams in the West ever season.

The Sooners have non-conference games scheduled with Georgia (2023, 2031), Tennessee (2024) and Alabama (2032, 2033). The Longhorns have non-conference games scheduled with Alabama (2023), Georgia (2028, 2029) and Florida (2030 and 2031). (Another) assumption is that those future games would be folded into the SEC schedule.

OU also has a non-conference home-and-home scheduled with Michigan (2025, 2026) while Texas is scheduled to play Michigan in 2024 and Ohio State in 2025, 2026. 

Those contests are challenging and potential losses for the two Big 12 escapees which would make it even tougher to avoid three or more losses.

There’s been a discussion of the SEC dividing into four-team pods. That could look like this:

Pod 1 Pod 2 Pod 3 Pod 4
Florida Alabama LSU Arkansas
Georgia Auburn Mississippi State Missouri
Kentucky Tennessee Ole Miss Oklahoma
South Carolina Vanderbilt Texas A&M Texas

As mentioned above, one of the clunky aspects of scheduling 16 teams is that it can be several years between schools facing each other or visiting every campus. That issue even exists in the current 14-team SEC. For instance, Texas A&M has been in the SEC since 2012 but Georgia has yet to play in College Station while Auburn only plays Florida once every 10 years.

Pods don’t solve that issue, nor do they solve other problems.

If the SEC sticks with an 8-game conference schedule, rotating the pod matchups every season would require playing one team from one of the other two pods. No doubt there would be inequities depending on the luck of the draw of that one foe.

A 9-game league schedule would require pods matched up on a rotating basis along with scheduling two teams from the other two pods. 

Also, the four pods proposed would create a rivalry problem. While Pods 1 and 2 preserve annual rivalries (Florida-Georgia, Alabama-Auburn and Alabama-Tennessee), Pods 3 and 4 create a conundrum. Pod 4 would maintain the annual Red River Rivalry but with Texas A&M in Pod 3, the SEC expansion would not appear to renew the Longhorns-Aggies rivalry which was last played in 2011.

Switching A&M with Arkansas or Missouri would solve the A&M-UT rivalry but would overload Pod 4 and weaken Pod 3.

If the SEC continues with its championship game, the division winners would continue to play in that. The loser would add a loss to its record (thanks, Captain Obvious). For what it’s worth, only once has the championship game pitted teams with perfect conference records and seven times there has been a team with one league loss facing a team with a clean league record.

Should the SEC decide on using pods, it’s assumed the championship game would match the two teams with the best league records (similar to what the Big 12 currently does). If so, there’s a high likelihood of ties between schools with the second-best record. Finding an equitable tie-breaker formula will require considerable study.

It’s granted and understood that, while what has been written here makes sense regarding the assumptive speculation. Your Veteran Scribe has no trouble admitting that the SEC office has several employees, starting with commissioner Greg Sankey, who have more experience and brain power. 

If these issues are obvious to YVS, they’re blatantly obvious to the folks in the SEC, and should be obvious to the Big Ten, Atlantic Coast and Pac-12 conferences if they follow suit.

Mo’ money means mo’ problems and perhaps the complications will be accepted as the price of doing super conference business.