Pat Dye, the former football coach and athletic director at Auburn, was the first to broach the subject and stir a little controversy.
Dye's idea? Move Auburn to the SEC's Eastern Division and place Missouri in the West.
Current Auburn Athletic Director Jay Jacobs made the same suggestion at the recently completed SEC spring meetings, saying such a move just made sense.
Well, it is not going to happen unless Nick Saban and Alabama say OK, and there is as much a chance of that happening as there is of paying less in taxes.
The Crimson Tide are the SEC's most powerful entity, and one of the nation's most influential. Football success does that for a school.
There is no way Alabama would want to give Auburn more exposure in recruiting-rich Florida, as well as putting it in a division where it could win more consistently.
If that occurred, the regular-season showdown between Alabama and Auburn could be the start of back-to-back Iron Bowls, if the teams were to meet one week later in the SEC Championship Game.
Auburn could never dodge Alabama in the regular season because the Iron Bowl is part of the SEC fabric.
However, as it is now, Missouri is geographically out of place, but perhaps a little more thought would bring the SEC to the conclusion that instead of East-West, it should divide the conference into North and South.
The North would be the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Texas A&M, South Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Ole Miss, although you might never get the Rebels to admit they were in a division called north anything.
This alignment, in effect, keeps the nucleus of the old SEC in one division and the four expansion teams -- Hogs, Aggies, Gamecocks and Tigers -- in a different division, along with the Commodores, the only private school in the SEC, Kentucky and the Rebels.
Arkansas' yearly crossover game would be LSU, since it has grown into a mini-rivalry -- or at the very least, a heated competition.
This might not turn out to be ideal for the Hogs because the Tigers could be on the rise if new Coach Ed Orgeron meant it when he said he learned his lesson when he was head coach at Ole Miss.
If he recruits, does the CEO thing and leaves his coordinators alone, LSU will be very good, very soon.
Texas A&M would play Auburn as its annual crossover, which is a natural because both schools have spent many decades being the "other" school in their state.
Missouri gets the dubious honor of playing Alabama, but the Tigers would get Florida and Georgia off their regular schedule, plus all of their travel would be easier and less expensive. And the Crimson Tide might not care, because Missouri would be just another "gimme."
Vanderbilt, obviously, would continue to play Tennessee to keep one of college football's most insignificant rivalries alive.
South Carolina would get Florida, keeping former Gators coach Will Muschamp and current Gators Coach Jim McElwain in their yearly showdown.
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Ole Miss and Mississippi State would get to keep the Egg Bowl alive.
Kentucky would get Georgia because the Wildcats and Bulldogs have to play someone.
A North-South Division might look like it is designed to get Alabama off Arkansas' schedule. But that really had nothing to do with this suggestion, or at least not much. Well, it wasn't the only reason to suggest such a division.
The SEC as it stands now is not divided fairly or geographically. Maybe it should go to one division, give every team two historical games and then rotate everything every two years.
Sports on 06/13/2017