College football insider predicts every SEC permanent opponent pairing with Texas, Oklahoma joining
The SEC is widely expected to announce a division-less scheduling model in the coming weeks or months for 2024 when Texas and Oklahoma join the league. And Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger took a stab at predicting potential schedule groupings around the league.
The SI projection follows the idea that the SEC would protect three main opponents that teams would play every year while rotating through the rest of the league opponents in the other six open conference games.
While these are not by any means official, SI certainly got on the right track with a few things like protecting big-name rivalries. Beyond some of the givens like the Iron Bowl, a lot of the potential matchups are up for debate.
Take a gander and see the SI projection for the SEC division-less schedule groupings.
SI’s projected schedule groupings
Missouri: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Vanderbilt
Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Ole Miss
Texas A&M: LSU, Texas Mississippi State
Texas: Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Arkansas
Oklahoma: Texas, Missouri, Florida
LSU: Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Alabama
Ole Miss: Mississippi State, LSU, Arkansas
Mississippi State: Ole Miss, Kentucky, Texas A&M
Alabama: Auburn, Tennessee, LSU
Auburn: Alabama, Georgia, Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt: Tennessee, Auburn, Missouri
Tennessee: Vanderbilt, Alabama, South Carolina
Kentucky: Mississippi State, South Carolina, Georgia
Georgia: Auburn, Florida, Kentucky
Florida: Georgia, South Carolina, Oklahoma
South Carolina: Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky
Nick Saban voices displeasure over three schools Alabama likely to play in new format
The SEC is currently deciding whether to move to a nine-game conference schedule or stay with the current eight-game format once Texas and Oklahoma join to give the league 16 teams.
Momentum seems to be with the nine-game format and Alabama head coach Nick Saban, the elder statesman of the conference, is an advocate for it. However, the nine-game slate is rumored to be completely different from the current divisional setup. Instead of playing six or seven set teams every year, each club would be assigned three annual rivals, with the other games being rotated.
Apparently Saban has already gotten a look at who Alabama’s three rivals may be: Tennessee, Auburn and LSU — arguably the Crimson Tide’s three biggest rivals according to most fans. So that makes sense, right? Not according to Saban. He thinks that’s an unfair grouping for his team.
“I’ve always been an advocate for playing more [conference] games,” Saban said to Sports Illustrated. “But if you play more games, I think you have to get the three fixed [opponents] right. They’re giving us Tennessee, Auburn and LSU. I don’t know how they come to that [decision].”
Saban continued, explaining that those teams are historically three of the better programs in the conference and it would be unfair for ‘Bama to have to play each of them every year.
“They said they did a 10-year whatever,” Saban continued. “Well, some of those years, Tennessee wasn’t as good as they’ve been in the previous 10 years, but now they are as good as they used to be before those 10 years.
“We got three teams and two of them are in the Top 10 and the other is in the Top 10 a lot. Look historically over a 25-year history, and the three best teams in the East are Georgia, Tennessee and Florida. You look historically at 25 years, Alabama, LSU and Auburn are the three best teams in the West. So we’re playing them all.”
Certainly an interesting point by Nick Saban, and it’s true: Alabama would be playing some of the best SEC programs every year. But perhaps that’s the price of being among the nation’s elite programs year in and year out.