Southeastern Conference presidents met on Thursday in Nashville, Tennessee at the conference's basketball tournament and discussed a multiple issues that will be further explored at the SEC Meetings in Destin, Fla. in May. The most noteworthy one from the public's viewpoint concerned possible changes in the NCAA's overtime rules and was driven by Texas A&M's wild seven overtime game with LSU last November. However, there was a different topic that probably impacts A&M athletics more directly than new overtime rules and that's cross division scheduling.

Each SEC team currently plays the six others in their division with one rotating opponent and another permanent opponent from the opposite division. The scheduling was set up after the Aggies and Missouri Tigers joined the conference in 2012 and displayed a desire maintain some of the SEC's traditional long time rivalries such as Alabama and Tennessee or Auburn and Georgia. However, in the process, the "permanent" cross division rivals of some schools have been considered an impediment to those programs being able to compete for division titles. For example, while the game between LSU and Florida makes for great football, it's also a difficult game for both programs. As a result, some schools want to go to change to a format that calls for two rotating opponents from the opposite division, eliminating the permanent opponent. Others have traditional rivals across the division that they want to continue to schedule.

“We voted to continue to study football scheduling,” said South Carolina president Harris Pastides who is currently serving as the SEC presidents board chair and the league’s board chair of the NCAA. “It’s a potentially very divisive issue - we’re talking about the inter-divisional competition that has Texas A&M be our so-called permanent Western rival. Several of us, we’d rather see more rotation, and really that’s for student-athlete well-being.

“We all loved going to Ole Miss last year and seeing that great university and watching our students have an opportunity in their four years at the university to see more of the SEC peers. There, of course, are other SEC programs that have an intra-divisional rival - Georgia and Auburn, for example - and they don’t really want to give that particular one up. Tennessee and Alabama goes back deep in history and so that will be a continued item for negotiation. I don’t know where it will end up, but we’re studying it yet again.”

The game between South Carolina and Texas A&M has been more of an issue for the Gamecocks than the Aggies. Since the two teams started playing in 2014, A&M has gone undefeated in the series and South Carolina has struggled to remain competitive as a program. What's really interesting is that the while the cross division games have maintained some long standing rivalries, there's only two of those rivalries involving four teams that feel strongly about that aspect of maintaining their scheduling. The remaining ten teams constitute the vast majority of the league could work to change things. It also could mean more frequent opportunities not just for teams to play each other but to take in different venues. For example, the Aggies made a trip to The Swamp last season to play Florida but they don't make a return visit for years. In addition, it's taken seven seasons for A&M to play Georgia. Most of all, the effects of the scheduling have been digested to the point that most schools seemingly want some kind of change and this could lead to the A&M and South Carolina game going away in favor of either more favorable or tougher opponents depending on how the schedule shakes out in any particular year. This means that while Aggies have generally counted the South Carolina game as a win things might get less predictable deepening on how the league and its television partners feel about the change.