Scheduling issues frustrate coaches

FAYETTEVILLE - The SEC, which expanded to 14 teams last year, continues to face one of the consequences of the decision to add Missouri and Texas A&M.

What to do about SEC football scheduling is sure to be one of the hottest topics at the league’s spring meetings later this month in Sandestin, Fla.

While the SEC continues to reap piles of money from its football resources - witness Thursday’s anticipated unveiling of the SEC Network, which projects as potentially a $1 billion enterprise within the next decade - and continues to dominate on the field with seven consecutive BCS national championships, the issue of football scheduling remains a thorny one.

The format for the 2014 schedule has not been determined, and if there is one thing league coaches seem set on it’s keeping conference games capped at eight.

“I’m kind of a big believer in if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Arkansas Coach Bret Bielema said.

The thinking goes: Why subject your team to another bruising SEC game every year, subtract a home game every other year and mess with the current setup by adding a ninth SEC game?“It would have a huge effect on your four non conference games going down to three, and I think if you’re a coach, you recognize that,” Missouri Coach Gary Pinkel said.

“It wouldn’t be good for us, Georgia and Florida because the three of us play our instate rivals that are currently in the [Atlantic Coast Conference] - FSU [Florida State], Clemson and Georgia Tech,” South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier said. “So that would make it a little more difficult for our three teams. The other schools, they don’t have an in-state rival that they have to play out of conference.” SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, speaking Monday at an Associated Press Sports Editors meeting in Birmingham, Ala., seems more open to the possibility of a nine-game league schedule, especially with the four-team playoff coming into play in 2014.

“Obviously the playoff impacts how we think about scheduling,” Slive said during a media question-and-answer session. “Strength of scheduling will be a significant component in the committee’s analysis. As far as I am concerned, I am open-minded about how we should schedule and I anticipate continued discussions about how we schedule in the future.” The SEC’s television “partners,” including ESPN and CBS, are also interested in how the scheduling works out.

“This is just my personal opinion,” Pinkel said. “TVwill have maybe something to say about that also, in terms of what they would like.” Bielema’s former conference, the Big Ten, has announced it is adopting a nine game conference schedule in 2016, joining the Big 12 and Pacific-12 in that format, and he said he can see both sides of the argument.

“The SEC has been defending national champion for a number of years now,” he said. “I have a hard time believing that formula doesn’t work, but I understand obviously in 2014 the world kind of changes a little bit. I understand the benefit of playing nine games.

“It’s obviously one less game you’d have to buy potentially as a school. That builds the conference brand even that much better. Also, on the flip side, it’s one more game that can really affect the overall bowl picture for the conference.” Larry Templeton, the former Mississippi State athletic director and senior adviser to the SEC who played a role in crafting the 2013 league schedule, said this fall’s slate is a stand-alone one-year bridge to the changes coming in 2014.

The 2013 schedule carried on the 6-1-1 format, meaning teams played the six opponents within their own division, one permanent crossover opponent and one rotating crossover opponent.

While there was talk Arkansas could begin facing its soon to be permanent Eastern Division opponent - Missouri - in 2013, that didn’t happen.

The Razorbacks wound up with a home game against South Carolina, its crossover opponent since joining the league in 1992, and a road date at Florida.

The 2014 schedule format is up for grabs.

The 6-1-1 format allows for a full rotation through each cross-division opponent every six years.

An impediment to creating two rotating opponents in the eight-game format is a pair of longstanding rivalries: Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia.

LSU Coach Les Miles has publicly opposed the permanent opponent setup, as his Tigers are matched up with Florida.

“I wonder the view of how the champion is decided in the finest collegiate football conference in America,” Miles said. “It’s interesting to see how you would compare our schedule with others. I wonder if there should be no permanent partners. I wonder if a computer might pick a fair schedule by random draw.

“I wonder what other conferences require mandatory crossovers. The key piece for any conference, certainly, is to allow equal access to be champion, and I suspect that there’s going to be some questions there.”

Florida Coach Will Muschamp said that while he knows how important the Florida-LSU game is for the conference, he understands Miles’ point. But he pointed out those decisions aren’t made by coaches.

“We can voice our opinion, and I understand the arguments on both sides of it,” Muschamp said. “At the end of the day, we’ve got some people in our conference that want the permanent opponents, obviously Tennessee and Alabama, Auburn and Georgia.”

The imbalance of the 6-1-1 schedule is particularly stark this coming fall. LSU takes on Florida and Georgia from the East, while Alabama, winner of three of the past four BCS championships, gets Tennessee and rotating opponent Kentucky. Florida and Georgia combined to go 23-4 last season and shared the SEC East title with 7-1 records. Tennessee and Kentucky combined to go 7-17 last year, with a 1-15 mark in conference play, a 13-game swing from LSU’s opponents from the East.

Arkansas’ crossover opponents in 2013 - Florida and South Carolina - were 13-3 in the SEC last year

“If we want to be fair, we would not have permanent crossover opponents,” said Spurrier, who debated that division champions should be decided solely on division records after the 2011 season, when his team swept the East but lost to Arkansas and Auburn from the West while Georgia took the division title aided by victories over Ole Miss and Mississippi State despite losing to the Gamecocks.

Alabama Coach Nick Saban said there are at least a couple of solutions to helping rotate all cross-divisional opponents every four years.

“Don’t have a fixed opponent and you play two; you play nine games, have a fixed opponent and rotate two,” he said. “There’s lot of different scenarios, and I think we’ve got a lot of good people trying to figure out what the best way to do that is.”