Games like Alabama vs. LSU, Florida vs. Tennessee, and Georgia vs. Tennessee will no longer be annual matchups.
The SEC plans to reassess these new permanent rivalries every four years.
Now they’ve gone and done it. It’s bad enough they’re trying to turn college football into a watered-down version of the antiseptic No Fun League.
But when the SEC joins the maddening race to see who can best imitate the NFL, well, they’ve gone and crossed the line.
They’re now systematically manipulating the sport of rivalries.
The SEC will announce future nine-game schedules Tuesday, but the news of permanent rivals has already reached the ether — and what in the fresh houndstooth hell is this?
Now I’m not an economics expert, but there’s no chance that’s good for business.
The conference that holds itself as bigger and badder than any other, just went soft. It’s a kinder, fairer SEC, ladies and gentlemen.
The games that built the once regional conference into a national Goliath are now an afterthought. Florida-Tennessee was the game of the 1990s in college football, and Alabama-LSU was the best game from 2000 until Nick Saban decided he wasn’t hanging around to watch player empowerment suffocate the sport.
Both are now history because of fairness and equality. We can’t have Alabama playing Auburn, Tennessee and LSU. Florida can’t play Georgia, Tennessee and LSU.
And LSU can’t play Alabama and Florida in the same season. It’s unsustainable.
I don’t know who at the SEC office needs to hear this, but Alabama plays LSU, Tennessee and Auburn every season. Been doing it for decades, and the world hasn’t screeched to an uneven halt.
In fact, 11 of Alabama’s 12 real national titles (not the fake, contrived titles), have come over the past 62 years the Tide has played LSU, Tennessee and Auburn in the same season.
My god, what would that struggling, wayward program in Tuscaloosa ever do if the schedule weren’t so difficult?
Florida won all three of its national titles while playing Georgia, LSU and Tennessee every single season since 1990. I’m going to go out on a limb and say playing those three annually isn’t the reason for Florida’s current struggles.
Hiring Moe, Larry and Curly to coach your program over the past two decades is more than likely a significant factor.
Then there’s LSU, which has won national titles with three different coaches since 2003 — and all three of those coaches dealt with a schedule that included Alabama and Florida in the same season.
Here’s the best part of this utter nonsense: the SEC has decided, in its infinite scheduling wisdom, to reassess permanent rivals every four years.
Uh, fellas, permanent means permanent. It doesn’t mean let’s see which program gets hot, and how we can then run cover.
It means establishing and building permanent rivalries that define who and what you are as a conference. Can’t-miss games that dictate the power and growth of the league.
College football’s DNA is rivalries, the lifeblood of a sport that has grown exponentially since the 1990s and is now the No. 2 televised sport in America — behind only the NFL. There’s a reason Rivalry Week is the biggest college football television draw, by far, every season.
Rivalries, more than anything, are the foundation of the sport of arguing. My team is better than yours, my band is better, my conference and coach are better, my quarterback and uniforms and anything else you can throw into the fiery, provincial pit.
It’s different, it’s unique and it’s everlasting. Unless it’s the SEC.
Where we’ll decide in four years if it means anything.
Then muck it up again.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
