Progressive SEC Scheduling: The Nitty Gritty

Today at the Mothership, we are tackling the issue of progressive SEC scheduling, how to both keep the good permanent rivalries and maintain the SEC's desire to keep the conference schedule at eight games. It is incredibly messy, but there is a way.

Here's how a progressive SEC schedule could work with a) eight conference games and b) only three permanent rivalries. And yes, it would take basically 18 years for everything to play out in a pretty cycle:

• For the six teams in the permanent rivalries (Alabama-Tennessee, Auburn-Georgia, LSU-Florida), you play your rival 18 times over 18 years, and you play everybody else in the opposite division three times, or once every six years.
• For teams without a permanent rival, you play three teams seven times, one team six times, and the teams above just three times.

While I wanted to keep the details relatively light in the main article, since I took the time to figure out how all these schedules might look, I figured I might as well share the results. Behold, 18 years of hypothetical SEC schedules!

One note: home-and-away status was a nightmare, and it resulted in a couple of kinks that I simply could not overcome. First, one of the permanent rivalries ends up uneven; for the example below, LSU ends up hosting Florida 10 times in 18 matchups. Meanwhile, one of the less permanent rivalries ends up uneven as well; in the example, South Carolina hosts Mississippi State in four of six matchups. There might be a way to overcome this, but I was getting a headache trying to figure it out. We'll just say that this evens out over the next 18-year cycle.

And yes, it is somewhat pathetic how long I spent on setting up these schedules, all for hypothetical purposes. Especially considering they will probably move to 16 teams before the 18-year "cycle" is even up.

Years four through 18 after the jump.