one side effect of realignment

[Kevin Caliendo]

The SEC has reportedly decided to go to 9 game conference schedule. Big deal? Well, in a 12-game schedule, that basically eliminates the chance of an SEC school playing a road OOC game vs a legit opponent. They are basically saying to get to the BCS title game you need to win 10 games in conference. Do you think FL will play FSU every year forever? Or Miami? LSU not going to go to wVU.

If the superconference 14-16 team models lead to 9 game conferecne schedules, the interconference matchups in September will go the way of single-wing offense. That sucks. And it is bad for the independents and great for the MACs and smaller school conferences.

And never having to prove yourself OOC makes ti tough to shed the "we're better than anyone else" lable the SEC has achieved. This year there isn't one NFL QB in the SEC, LSU and AL haven't faced a top 50 passing attack yet this year and won't maybe until a bowl game (maybe)

 

[upstater]

They will take on one big OOC opponent.

9 games simply guarantees you 2 home OOC games each year, with a 1-1 added to that. Some years they will have 3 OOC home games preferably scheduled when they have only 4 SEC home games. This will guarantee schools 7 home games each year.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Actually, I believe the reason is that the guarantee games were becoming so expensive and difficult to schedule that they decided to just add a conference game.

 

[Uptop]

The 9th game will be televised. So, is this espn requiring conferences that expand to provide more inventory in order to receive larger payouts?

 

[SAMCRO]

Have to wonder how much this jeopardizes our home and home scheduled w/ Tennessee in '15 & '16. They'll need to drop someone, and as of now they are scheduled to play:
2015: UAB, Oklahoma, @ UConn, and @ Memphis
2016: UConn, @ Nebraska.

Hope they decide to drop the OU series (2014 and 2015) and the Nebraska series (2016 and 2017) .

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The 9th game will be televised. So, is this espn requiring conferences that expand to provide more inventory in order to receive larger payouts?

It actually ends up being less inventory. Assume that most of the 14 teams would have probably used that game to schedule a home game against a MAC or Sun Belt opponent. So you take 11 home games that would have fallen under the ESPN contract and replace them with 7. The flip side is that those 7 are much higher quality.