The SEC football scheduling debate: Nine games or not?

The scheduling issue has also been a frequent bone of contention for Steve Spurrier recently, because South Carolina has drawn more challenging opponents from the West than Georgia has (although the shoe is on the other foot this year).

The obstacles to fair (or at least truly random) non-conference scheduling are the Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia rivalries. Offer a Georgia fan fewer games with Auburn and more games with the Mississippi schools, and he won’t be pleased. But offer those fans a three-week period of top SEC opponents playing one another, and he might see a worthwhile trade-off.

Our SEC panelists from around SB Nation’s college network were asked the following question:

Are you in favor of a nine-game conference schedule? Is preserving annual cross-division rivalries (Alabama-Tennessee, Georgia-Auburn, LSU-Florida) worth adding seven more conference losses to the aggregate and having fewer teams make bowls?

The SEC spring meetings are going on, and the 14 coaches in the conference are discussing various issues related to the conference, such as whether or not to expand the schedule. They took a vote on whether or not the league should go from their current eight-game format to nine games, and although it didn’t officially decide anything, the result was pretty resounding:

Honestly, though, it’s no surprise Saban is the only guy in favor of this. Coaches crave wins, and an eight-game conference schedule means one less opportunity to guarantee one and .5 less home games per season. Saban rarely has to worry about his team scrounging to bowl eligibility and can afford an SEC loss a year and still make the national title game. Those aren’t luxuries most coaches can afford, but that’s Alabama football.

One of the results of conference realignment is that more leagues are talking nine-game conference schedules. The Pac-12 and Big 12 already do it, the Big Ten will start in 2016 after Maryland and Rutgers come aboard, and the ACC and SEC have at least discussed it. Chances are good that if your team plays in a major conference, it will play a nine-game conference schedule eventually.

Since this is a thing in college football that exists, it has drawn a wide array of opinions ranging from THAT’S GREAT to THIS IS LITERALLY THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED. It’s neither of those things, but there are positive and negative aspects, to be sure.

Mark Womack, the executive associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, said in an interview Thursday that the 2013 SEC football schedule “has no impact” on schedules after next season:

Womack said in the interview they need to “look at the last weekend of the season ... to try to have games for everyone on that last weekend” in order to develop a scheduling model for the long term.