| NEWS Every college football conference should scrap divisions. Here's the whole Power 5 plan. - SB Nation

[SEC Sports]

The pod system means playing every team in your conference every couple years, enjoying schedule parity, preserving top rivalries, and ensuring the best conference title game possible

Most college football conferences have divisions. The SEC started the trend in 1992, when it added a conference championship and needed a way to pick two reps. It made sense at the time.

But several conferences have grown to 14 teams. That’s way too many for a division setup, since even a nine-game schedule means some teams go years without playing alleged conference rivals.

Really, every conference should get rid of divisions and just assign a few annual rivalries, which would mean plenty of obvious benefits.

Since each conference has its own unique issues, here are custom proposals for the entire Power 5. Most non-power conferences could also adapt one of these.

1. We started with the SEC, since its rivalries are the most complicated. Most everybody liked our proposal.
Scrapping divisions in the 14-team SEC would mean we could protect three annual rivalries for each team, plus ensure every other matchup happened every other year.

Result: no major rivalries lost, every team visiting every SEC stadium once or twice every four years, no more lopsided SEC Championship matchups, and better schedule parity.

Here were those annual rivalries we picked, and here’s a bunch more about our SEC plan, including our finding that this would make every team’s two-year schedule strength basically equal:



It could still be tweaked, but every tiny change to accommodate one rivalry means adjusting others down the line. LSU fans would prefer Florida over Ole Miss, and Auburn fans would prefer plenty of teams over Mississippi State, but every team will play every team within every two years anyway

Every conference should replace divisions with pods

Replacing divisions with a pod system would carry a ton of benefits and no obvious drawbacks.

www.sbnation.com

 

[TerryP]

Holes abound in this proposal. A lot of them.

By scraping divisions and then picking the two best teams in the conference you're still going to have your Bama v Florida, or Bama v Mizzou blowouts.

He theorizes that this will balance out strength of schedule. It does no such thing. Take Bama again. You're looking at the Tide having to play three of the "have's" in the SEC. On the other hand (if we call A&M a "have" and Mizzou a "have not..."

The "have's" as permanent opponents:

A&M has one,
Arkansas has one.
Auburn has two.
Florida has two.
Georgia has two.
UK has zero.
LSU has two.

There isn't a team scheduled here thats playing as many "have's" as Bama.

 

[Max]

Holes abound in this proposal. A lot of them.

Look at the B1G!

 

[252BAMA]

"Most college football conferences have divisions. The SEC started the trend in 1992, when it added a conference championship and needed a way to pick two reps. It made sense at the time."

The SEC did NOTHING original in 1992. Roy Kramer took a NCAA rule that was never intended for 1A football and followed it to the letter. That rule stated, "conferences must have at least 12 members, and championship games must be between the winners of two divisions within the conference. Each division must play a round-robin schedule during the regular season in order to hold a championship game."

The rule is still in effect, and though relaxed for the Big 12, they did not get what they wanted. They are still required to play a round robin schedule.