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What an expanded SEC schedule could look like for the Oklahoma Sooners

John Williams
·3 min read
4

If the rumored move to the SEC comes to fruition for the Oklahoma Sooners and the Texas Longhorns, the SEC would form the first 16-team conference in the country and alter the landscape of college football as we know it.

But what could an SEC schedule look like for the Oklahoma Sooners in a 16 team conference?

There’s some talk about a “pod system” that would break the 16 teams into 4 four-team pods.

In my opinion, this makes it way more complicated than it needs to be. Going with two divisions of eight teams makes a ton of sense and gives the SEC members 11 games against each other.

First, the SEC should keep it simple by moving Alabama and Auburn to the SEC East, allowing Oklahoma and Texas to play in the west.

That would put the Sooners in an eight-team division with:

That gives them seven games in their division.

And the East would look like this:

Again, keep it simple and have four games against the other divisions. That would give teams 11 games in the conference. Want them to have a non-conference game against, say, Oklahoma State, and that gets Oklahoma to 12 games in the regular season.

If that’s too many games, cut the non-conference game altogether and play a conference-only schedule.

So what would the schedule look like:

Divisional

  • Arkansas Razorbacks

  • Louisiana State Tigers

  • Mississippi State

  • Missouri Tigers

  • Ole Miss Rebels

  • Texas A&M Aggies

  • Texas Longhorns

Cross-divisional

In the cross-divisional matchups, the Sooners would play four teams from the SEC East.

  • Alabama Crimson Tide

  • Florida Gators

  • Kentucky Wildcats

  • Tennessee Volunteers

The following season, they’d play the other four.

  • Auburn Tigers

  • Georgia Bulldogs

  • South Carolina Gamecocks

  • Vanderbilt Commodores

Non-conference

  • Oklahoma State Cowboys

Want to keep Bedlam around for the future? Schedule it as your lone non-conference game. Though the game has been a lopsided affair in its history, it’s still a game that means a lot to the state of Oklahoma.

To keep the non-conference game would ease some of the pain from the departure of OU to the SEC, though not likely all of it. Oklahoma State would be left behind in a Big 12 that wouldn’t look near as big.

That’s 12 games for the Oklahoma Sooners. 11 SEC games and an important non-conference game. A schedule like this certainly raises the stakes for Oklahoma and the conference as a whole. Minimizing FCS scheduling and limiting non-conference to big-time games makes every single week on the schedule matter and puts the SEC as a brand on televisions with key matchups every single week.

And I don’t know about you, but that’s really fun schedule that the Oklahoma Sooners would be playing if they land in the SEC and the conference followed this alignment.