Tennessee football in trouble if SEC follows new Pac-12 title format

What’s the point of divisions if you’re just going to have the two teams with the best record play for the conference championship? That’s a question for the Pac-12 to answer, but as the SEC gets set to realign, Tennessee football had better pray that won’t be its league’s new format.

The Pac-12 announced Wednesday that it will keep its two divisions, but the championship game will just feature the teams with the two best winning percentages. Obviously, in certain cases, that could bring about a gigantic flaw.

There’s a chance one division is significantly worse but has two good teams, and those teams could load up on their record by beating the other teams. Now, it’s better with the Pac-12 because they have a nine-game schedule and just 12 teams, so this isn’t really an issue

On the other hand, the SEC has just eight games and 14 teams with 16 set to come. Given the way the Pac-12 is doing its schedule, you could theoretically see the SEC doing something like that. The cleanest way for the league to keep up its traditions is two eight-team divisions.

Even with two eight-team divisions, the need for revenue from more games and bowl appearances might entice the conference to keep league games at eight, meaning you play all seven teams in your division and just one team on a rotating basis from the other.

At that point, if the SEC uses the Pac-12 format, well, there could only be two good teams from one division. They would each automatically have six wins against the other teams in their division, so 6-2 is a baseline, while the other division beats up on each other.

How does this affect Tennessee football? Well, if the SEC goes the cleanest route, then the Auburn Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide will move over to the East while the Missouri Tigers will move over to the West. The balance of power immediately shifts to the East at that point with Bama and the Georgia Bulldogs there.

Everybody wants to talk about the tradition fo the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners. Texas hasn’t won a national title since 2005, and OU hasn’t won it since 2000. There will be four teams in the East that have won it all more recently: Alabama, Georgia, the Florida Gators twice, and the Auburn Tigers.

Taking recency into account, only the LSU Tigers keep the West dominant on a consistent basis. Texas has been mediocre for years at this point. Looking toward the future, NIL deals could benefit the Texas A&M Aggies, but that’s way down the road.

Simply put, a two-division 16-team SEC with eight conference games when Texas and OU join puts the East at a disadvantage based on recent history. Now, to be fair, the Vols aren’t likely to win the East with Bama and Georgia in it anytime soon anyway.

Still, let’s say they finally break through and do it in the near future. It would be in a season in which they went 6-2 and everybody else went 5-3 because the East beat each other up. Then you could see LSU go 8-0 from the West and somebody like OU or A&M go 7-1 while every other team in the division was mediocre that year.

See the problem? Tennessee football would be iced out of the title game despite winning the East. Honestly, Vol fans shouldn’t be the ones screaming loudest against it. Alabama and Georgia fans should be. What’s clear is that this is a model the SEC can’t implement.