This seems to create the potential for enormously unbalanced schedules that can make it more difficult for some teams to win the division. For example, this season Mississippi State had the good fortune of playing cross-division rivals Kentucky and Vanderbilt with their combined conference record of 2-14. Arkansas, on the other hand, had the bad luck of playing Missouri and Georgia and their combined record of 13-3. That’s asking Arkansas to do a lot more heavy lifting than Mississippi State to make it to the promised land.

AD

AD

Another hardship case is LSU. Its natural rival is Florida which means that every year it has to play Alabama, Auburn and Florida. They have combined to win six of the last eight BCS National Championships (the other two are Florida State and LSU itself).

Single season anomalies are not necessarily indicative that the entire process is unfair. Perhaps the schedules balance out over time. The chart below shows the strength of schedule for each team’s cross-divisional opponents from 1992 to 2014. The strength of schedule is represented by the number of conference wins by the opponent.

The chart shows that the schedule did not even out over time. Auburn, Tennessee and Florida had the toughest opponents and Ole Miss and Mississippi State had the easiest. When we compare the strength of schedule to each team’s performance, however, we get something unexpected. The blue bar indicates how well each team has performed in the SEC. The red bar indicates how difficult their cross-divisional schedule was.

The three teams with the toughest cross-divisional opponents – Auburn, Tennessee, and Florida – have been among the most successful teams in the SEC. And the two teams with the easiest cross-divisional opponents – Ole Miss and Mississippi State – have fared among the worst in the SEC. Alabama and Georgia are certainly enjoying their favorable schedules. Kentucky, however, is not.

The chart below shows how frequently each team has played teams from the other division. The natural rivals are easy to pick out because they are the biggest bubbles. Most teams also have another bubble that’s slightly smaller. This is because the SEC schedule had two natural rivals from 1992 to 2002.

The three big bubbles in the upper-right corner form the holy trinity of SEC matchups: Alabama-Tennessee, Georgia-Auburn and Florida-LSU. Four of those six schools have won the BCS National Championship recently. Forcing those teams to play every year may not be the most fair thing to do but it certainly creates a tremendous amount of excitement for the SEC. It also creates the unpleasant side-effect of Mississippi State-Kentucky and Ole Miss-Vanderbilt playing each other every year. Those are the eggs that have to be cracked to make a good omelet.

AD

AD

It’s interesting to note the wide gap separating the bottom two teams from the rest of the division. It certainly looks like only four horses from each division have a shot each year, but that’s probably not caused by the unbalanced schedule.

The chart below shows the strength of schedule for each place in the division. There is a slight trend upward indicating a slight correlation between where a team places and how tough its cross-divisional schedule is. But it’s not a strong enough trend to indicate that the unbalanced schedule is a driving factor.

The SEC’s unbalanced schedule seems to be unfair in theory but in practice it seems to work great. There have been 46 divisional winners crowned since 1992 and only three were affected directly by the unbalanced cross-divisional schedule. In 2005 and 2011 Georgia won the East division with help from their weak cross-divisional opponents. Arkansas won the West division in 1995 with an assist from favorably scheduling.