What Alabama football, SEC can teach Big 12 about scheduling

Alabama football and the rest of the SEC could teach the Big 12 a thing, or two, about scheduling. Here’s what the SEC does that the Big 12 should.

This past weekend was cupcake central for many top SEC teams. Fans of the conference’s flagship schools were treated to sweet treats such as Alabama vs. The Citadel, Auburn vs. Liberty, LSU vs. Rice, and Florida vs. Idaho, among others.

While The Citadel miraculously managed to head to halftime with a 10-10 tie against the No. 1-ranked Crimson Tide before a suffering 50-17 loss, most of these “contests” were blowouts with 50 or 60-point margins.

The reason that many SEC schools were playing lower-division or lower-tier schools in the middle of November? Advantageous scheduling to craft the best College Football Playoff résumé. The best teams benefit by having a sugary, confectionary treat the week before the regular-season finales: look at next Saturday’s Iron Bowl. Alabama opened its game against The Citadel as 51-point favorites while its in-state rival took on a Liberty squad that has just moved up from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).

Take Alabama and Georgia, for example, as two of the standard bearers of the SEC. There is no disputing that these are two of the strongest programs in college football. But do the two programs enjoy scheduling benefits that allow the SEC to sneak in multiple bids to the four-team College Football Playoff, as what happened last year?

Alabama enjoyed a bye week before their much-ballyhooed Nov. 3 bout with LSU. Georgia was off a week before playing Florida in “the world’s largest outdoor cocktail party” and played lowly UMass last weekend before, you guessed it, facing rival Georgia Tech this weekend. LSU and Florida also had bye weeks before facing Alabama and Georgia.

Every team in college football plays lesser teams, to be sure. But the second aspect of beneficial SEC scheduling lies in its in-conference games.

The SEC expanded to 14 teams in 2012, giving the conference two divisions of seven teams each. Yet, each team only plays eight conference games total each year. Generally, one team plays another cross-divisional opponent every year, meaning that some teams might only meet once every six years.

Alabama plays Tennessee every year in a cigar-chomping rivalry that dates back generations. With six divisional opponents from the SEC West to play annually, the Crimson Tide has only one game left to rotate between six other SEC East teams.

This scheduling practice gives top SEC teams an advantage over its Big 12 counterparts, as an example. Alabama and Georgia have met several times in the SEC Championship Game and only rarely in the regular-season. Alabama has traveled to Athens, Ga., twice since 2003. Since 1999, Alabama has traveled to Gainesville, Fla. just twice, although the two teams have met several times in the conference title game since then.

In the Big 12, on the other hand, 10 teams play a nine-game conference schedule and play each other every year. West Virginia doesn’t get to duck playing OU and Texas each season. TCU travels to Norman, Okla. every other year. The conference’s tagline is “One True Champion,” and it added a conference title game to help better position the league champion for a CFP berth.

The SEC already has that figured out. As the top SEC teams avoid playing each other, more potential scenarios are created that help the league get a one-loss or two-loss team into the CFP. Last season, Georgia and Alabama both advanced to the CFP, even though Alabama hadn’t appeared in the conference title game (that was Auburn as the SEC West champs). Georgia did not play normal SEC stalwarts like Alabama or LSU and emerged as a one-loss team after dropping a regular-season game to Auburn. The Tide’s regular-season schedule predictably, was devoid of Florida or Georgia.

Match the avoidance of its own top teams playing each other with some cupcakes from this past weekend and you’ve got a real Thanksgiving treat for the SEC.