Question: Who should be our 3rd Permanent Rival?

[YellowHammerTime]

Personally I believe Dixieland Delight answers this question pretty firmly.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZPrsk08VcDg

 

[DzynKingRTR]

Long time, no see Bama folks. Decided to make my way over and see what others were saying.

It's funny, but seems most schools are struggling with who the "third" should be. Looks like you guys are having the same debate. Won't happen, but I'd absolutely love if ours included you. But pretty sure the prognosticators are right, LSU, Texas and either Miss State or Arkansas for us.

Oddly, I see some on other SEC school boards pairing us with Missouri. That makes no sense, other than just to pair us since we entered the SEC together (but makes no sense in terms of "rivalry", geography, history, etc.).

Well to be fair Mizzu doesn't really pair with anyone. People often forget they are even in the SEC

 

[arthurdawg]

Long time, no see Bama folks. Decided to make my way over and see what others were saying.

It's funny, but seems most schools are struggling with who the "third" should be. Looks like you guys are having the same debate. Won't happen, but I'd absolutely love if ours included you. But pretty sure the prognosticators are right, LSU, Texas and either Miss State or Arkansas for us.

Oddly, I see some on other SEC school boards pairing us with Missouri. That makes no sense, other than just to pair us since we entered the SEC together (but makes no sense in terms of "rivalry", geography, history, etc.).

Welcome back! We will be Aggies come November 28th.

 

[Con]

I think we should limit it to 1 permanent conference opponent per team. Having 3 permanent opponents makes zero sense in the playoff format we are headed towards.t The decision to move to 9 games, is very likely to be a precursor to adopting the 4-4-2-2-1-1 formet, so in this playoff model, all the SEC schools are competing against each for 4 playoff spots, because there wouldn't be any ar large bids unless Notre Dame lost a bunch of games. The 3 permanent conference opponents would make sense in the 5-11 model (or any model variation that would limit the auto bids to 1 per conference), but I really don't think that's where we're headed.

Let's use Auburn as an example, so it doesn't come across as homerism. Their permanent opponents are almost guaranteed to be Alabama and Georgia, so that's already a gauntlet in itself. The third opponent could be LSU. I don't think it will be, but it might if we get MSU over LSU. So for argument's sake let's assume it's LSU. So they would have to play Bama, Georgia, and LSU EVERY year, while say, Ole Miss's projected permanent opponents are Mississippi State, Arkansas and LSU according to google. That's a drastic difference, even if you replaced LSU with someone else on Auburn's. How is that fair? What are the odds of Auburn EVER finishing in the top 4 of the SEC with that schedule. It's fine with me because it's Auburn, but it wouldn't feel good if the shoe were on the other foot. There are also way too many SEC teams to be clogging up the schedule with 3 permanent opponents. It would probably take a decade for every SEC team to face each other at least once.

I like having one like you are thinking or just have none so no team can complain every year. Set it up year by year by how you finished in the conference from the year before. The top teams may have a tougher schedule or just balance it out evenly.