In the article, Florida's AD states: "The focus should be on how we as a league use that strength to further position the SEC as we face new realities." What are these new realities? NIL? What do NIL agreements have to do with the games played during the season?
I agree with the posters on here who think this is just smoke.
1. The NCAA allows each conference 1 extra game for a conference championship game and then the 2 game playoff or single bowl game. Does the SEC think they can just add games to the schedule? Why not start at the beginning of September and run through the first week of January - or even longer?
2. If they just want their "playoff" to find a conference champion who would then be eligible to participate in the NCAA College Playoff, they would have to have a flex schedule over the last week or 2 of the regular season depending on how many playoff teams they have. As an example, if the top 4 teams make their playoff, you'd have to have the #1 and #4 team play against each other and the #2 and #3 teams play each other the last week of the regular season. All of the "regular" season games scheduled for that last week would have to be rescheduled for those teams playing in the playoff. The NFL's flex schedule is just the timing of the games. The participants don't change. Here, the SEC would have to reschedule opponents and locations of games. This would be pretty tough to do logistically speaking and for ticket selling purposes.
3. What do you do about rivalry weekend? Is that the weekend of the first "playoff" game? If so, do you move rivalry games up one week (ex. Bama-Auburn, Ole Miss-Miss St., etc)? What about the rivalries for those outside the conference (i.e. Florida-FSU, UGA-GT, etc.)?
4. How would this affect how other sports are handled? Would the other conferences want to include the SEC in the basketball tournament or baseball tournament? (This would be in the circumstance where the SEC has its own playoff and does NOT participate in the NCAA College Football Playoff).
5. This is probably just a reaction to the Big 10-ACC-PAC12 alliance which is going to lead to more out-of-conference games among those conferences, isolating the SEC from more attractive OOC games and also the refusal to increase the College Playoff to 12 teams as these other conferences want things to be fairer across the board instead of tilted in the SEC's favor.
6. There are too many FBS schools to begin with. The Power 5 need to separate and create their own division level of NCAA football (68 teams), call it FBS-A. Sorry Group of 5, you guys will be FBS-AA with the remaining 62 teams. You have your own college playoff and National Champion. FBS-A needs to set up a new central NCAA to make rules for recruiting, NIL, and all the other areas of disagreement that are leading to this unrest which could end up ruining the great sport of college football if left unchecked. It would probably be in the best interest of the FBS-A to negotiate multiple TV deals for the conferences which everyone participates in equally (like the 32 NFL teams do in the AFC and NFC). If you are a big state school like Michigan, you get the extra $$$ you get from your huge stadium and large alumni base, but the big TV $$$ is split equally among all 68 teams so even the smaller schools (like Miami) will not be so far away from competing with the "big boys".
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