SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey proposes eliminating pods, going to one single division
Speaking at the Southeastern Conference's Commissioner Luncheon in Greenville, SC on Thursday, Commissioner Greg Sankey addressed one of the most prevalent questions surrounding the addition of Texas and Oklahoma to the conference: How the schedule would work.
According to radio host Marc Ryan of 97.7 The Fan Upstate, the SEC is moving away from the current setup of two divisions as well as the common proposal of four team pods once the SEC expands to 16 members with the addition of Texas and Oklahoma.
The pod system was seen as the most common sense way to preserve traditional rivalries and ensure an even rotation of opponents - as schools were grouped into four-team pods, they would play the other members of their pod every season as well as two teams each from the other three pods, on a rotating basis, ensuring that you had one home and one away matchup versus every team over a four-year period. Changing to one division would require a manual schedule, to ensure that every team rotates through the rest of the conference regularly.
NCAA rules previously prohibited a 16-team conference without divisions from conducting a conference championship game.
(The Big 12 doesn't have divisions and hosts a championship game, because the ten-team conference features a round-robin schedule with nine conference games per team. A round-robin schedule in a 16-team conference, while entertaining, would be untenable.)
This rule was changed in May 2022, with the Pac-12 presenting the motion and all FBS conferences voting to approve it. Under this change, there is no longer a requirement to have divisions with round-robin schedules to have a championship game, and conferences can set their own Championship Game eligibility requirements.
Under a division-less format, it's still entirely possible to have protected rivalries, such as Auburn-Alabama and Georgia-Florida, although it does require more work to create a schedule around immovable "milestone" games like the Iron Bowl (final regular season Saturday), the Egg Bowl (Thanksgiving), and Florida-Georgia in Jacksonville (usually, but not always, the last weekend in October).
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