Quote Originally Posted by Stech View Post
The lack of OOC games is one of the reasons that both the SEC and ACC are close to going to 16 teams...you can create pods or 8 team divisions that will make it easier to have OOC games.

The key is having Pods and Divisions that preserve the most important regular season rivalries.
I think SEC states pat, look at Saban's remarks at SEC media days. Just adding teams sounds great, Texas A&M and Mizzou were great pickups but the current arrangement of 6-1-1 means you will only play home-home once in 12 years. Saban lamented that there would be several teams for each class that would never play against each other. Are you really in the same conference if you rarely play ? I look for them to go to 9 game conference schedule but adding 2 more and going to pods or 8 team divisions further fractures the treasured long term rivalries. The resistance to 9 team conference scheduling comes from the cellar dwellers that want to schedule 4 cream puffs and then hope to get a couple of SEC wins to be bowl eligible.

You just can't have it both ways, more teams and "preserve the most important regular season rivalries". No matter how many teams, each team would have a different opinion of what the most important games would actually be and what would be the most attractive lineup for them . The Big 10 only added Nebraska and had a lot of heartburn tweaking their schedules and concluded they needed the 9th game as well in the future. 12 is actually the ideal number but 14 will work.