I’ve been keeping track of the conference opponent rotation since 2015-16 when the SEC went to the current format of three permanent ‘rivals’ that you play twice every year, plus two more opponents that you play twice that would change each year, and then play everyone else once. The natural assumption regarding whom we would play twice was that after you take out our three permanent ‘rivals’ we would cycle through the remaining ten teams over a five year period, getting two per year. This will be year five and that hasn’t been the case. Here is how our ‘rotating opponents’ that we played twice have looked:
2015-16: Mississippi State and Tennessee
2016-17: Florida and Vanderbilt
2017-18: Auburn and Ole Miss
2018-19: Ole Miss and Vanderbilt
2019-20: Mississippi State and Tennessee (the whole slate of home vs. road is identical to that in 2015-16).
As you can see, we have drawn Mississippi State, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Ole Miss as our ‘rotating opponents’ twice while we are still yet to get Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, or South Carolina since the SEC went to this format.
Scottie, could you or one of our other media members please ask someone associated with the SEC why the conference is not having all of the members take turns playing each other twice a year in balanced fashion? I would like to know their reasons behind the unbalanced rotation. Thanks.
Gonna call you Mr. Observant. That is some good stuff brother.
Thanks! I don’t think anyone really minds when it comes to Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. But I think it’s unfortunate for our program that we aren’t being given a turn to play Kentucky twice. The only time it happened was the 2013-14 season when we swept them. But that was under the prior scheduling format. I think the conference should be on record explaining why they aren’t rotating everyone evenly under the current format.
Very valid point. I hope someone from the media does an investigation of this.
I am bumping this to see if I can get one of the media members to acknowledge my request about asking the SEC why they are not rotating the teams equally.