If you’re reading this, it’s been awhile. I wrote some form of SEC Power Rankings across various now-defunct websites for the last 15 or so seasons, but last year’s expansion to 16 teams felt like a breaking point for me. I’d like to get back to talking about our big, dumb, fun tenuous alliance of schools football teams, so we’re going to try out a new format: quads. Each edition, rather than ranking teams into a nice, tidy list we’ll split them up into four sections of varying size and quality. Sometimes that will be actual team ability, most of the time it will be something more tangential. Our first topic is mostly to clear the air on something that’s been bothering me for the past year.

What, exactly, are we doing here with the schedule?

Since the 2012 addition of Texas A&M and Missouri, the most obvious flaw in the SEC’s scheduling was that teams rarely faced off against opponents from the opposite division, which made the (at the time) massive 14-team conference feel more like an HOA than a real neighborhood – functioning more to collectively bargain for TV deals and rule changes than to actually get along together.

For a particularly egregious example of this phenomenon, Florida’s second-most-played opponent in school history is Auburn. This sounds completely insane to anyone under the age of 35, because the two teams have met twice in the last fifteen years. You could have started and finished an entire PhD program in between the 2011 and 2019 meetings. That’s so dumb!

So, when the conference expanded (a topic I’m still not fully ready to fully unpack outside of a therapy couch) and got rid of the East and West divisions, it had a marvelous opportunity to open up scheduling and make this Waffle House feel a bit more like a Waffle Home. Indeed, the first year of the Mega-SEC gave us some truly wild matchups – preseason favorite Georgia going on the road against Alabama and newcomer Texas three weeks apart, for instance.

But, to follow that up, Greg Sankey and friends decided that the best course of action for 2025 would be to run back the literal same conference opponents, only reversing home and road teams.

With the notable exception of giving Diego Pavia an unprecedented fourth opportunity to defenestrate Hugh Freeze on cable television, I cannot image who this decision benefits. Plenty of us were already mad about the way traditional rivalry (and pseudo rivalry) timeslots have been altered to make way for new opponents, and now some team schedules just truly feel wrong.

So that’s what we’ll focus on in the first edition of SEC Quads – who has the right schedule, who has the right opponents but the wrong order, who has the wrong opponents in an interesting way, and who is hitting the “sim to end of season” button?

Alabama Crimson Tide

Notable omissions: the Mississippi schools

Look, no one’s mind jumps straight to thinking it’s all that weird that Alabama isn’t playing Mississippi State, but the Bulldogs are the most-played opponent in Crimson Tide history so it’s at least noteworthy. Lane Kiffin not getting another shot at his former employer is another complaint, albeit a fairly minor one if we’re being reasonable.

Other than that, this is a pretty spot-on schedule, which won’t quell thoughts that the league offices in Birmingham start with Alabama and work from there when making decisions. The Tide get Auburn at the end of the year, an FCS team in the penultimate week, the “Third Saturday in October” game against Tennessee is actually on the third Saturday in October – which is not always the case, mind you – and we even get another matchup with Georgia at the end of September.

Arkansas Razorbacks

Notable omissions: N/A

If the Southeastern Conference is going to include both Texas and Texas A&M, it feels fitting that former Southwest Conference opponent Arkansas gets both on the schedule. The Hogs even get a Lou Holtz Bowl against Notre Dame in the middle of the season, which I’m going to say as little as possible about to avoid a defamation lawsuit.

I’d rather have the LSU game in the last week of the year, if only to minimize the potential missed games for whatever player is inevitably hurt by it toppling over in the celebration.

Georgia Bulldogs

Notable omissions: Vanderbilt, South Carolina

The rub of a lot of these scheduling complaints is going to come from the mid-tier schools, if we’re being honest with ourselves. Georgia fans probably don’t think much about not having Vanderbilt or South Carolina on the schedule, but fans of those teams really notice that the Bulldogs aren’t anywhere to be found.

Playing Tennessee in September still feels wrong, that should be the South Carolina game – cue Steve Spurrier joke here – and it was more fun when Auburn was the second-to-last game on the schedule but I fully understand why Auburn wanted that to change. Otherwise, this is a pretty fun mix of teams with old and new histories in Athens.

Texas A&M Aggies

Notable omissions: Alabama, Oklahoma

Literally the only thing that matters with an A&M schedule now is that the Texas game is played on Black Friday. It’s a little odd not to get the other former conference opponent in Oklahoma for the initial run, but this is a clear you had one job pass/fail scenario. Pass.

Texas Longhorns

Notable omissions: N/A

We get the A&M game back in it’s rightful spot, the Oklahoma series continues uninterrupted, a low-key great rivalry with Arkansas gets renewed and there’s a marquee rematch of last year’s bangers with Georgia. Not sure you could do much better than this, and that’s before you get to the massively hyped non-conference opener with Ohio State.

Florida Gators

Notable omissions: Auburn, South Carolina

The biggest issue with Florida’s schedule is the Tennessee game. Other than 9/11, COVID and (for some reason) 2014 scheduling oddities, the somehow unnamed game between the two former SEC East schools was played in September every year since 1991. Now, not only has it been pushed back, it’s taking place all the way in November. Gross! Who asked for this?

As a replacement, the LSU game (one of the really big wins for the conference’s permanent cross-division opponents solution to expansion in 2012) has been pushed up in place. Only one problem, that puts a series that has most notably turned vitriolic because of weather impacting matchups directly into Atlantic hurricane season. Fun!

LSU Tigers

Notable omissions: Auburn, Mississippi State

As noted above, playing Florida in September fails both the vibes check and brings in the potential to really derail the season with off-field nonsense early. LSU famously insists that it has no true rivals but closing the season with Oklahoma, a team the Tigers have played one time outside of a bowl game in their long history, doesn’t really track for me either.

The Tigers haven’t played Auburn as much as you would think – they’ve played Rice only two fewer times – but that game feels like a modern classic in the conference (obligatory Cam Newton highlight goes here) and would only be more fun with two volatile head coaches who could find themselves on the hot seat by the time we get to their standard October date.

Oklahoma Sooners

Notable omissions: Arkansas, Texas A&M

Flip the Missouri and LSU games at the end of the season and this makes a lot more sense. I wish the Sooners got the same thoughtfulness Texas got in restoring all the old conference opponents, and I like the stretch run against five interesting opponents beginning with the Red River Shootout in October, but this feels more like an auto-generated schedule in a video game than one made with care for the new conference member.

Tennessee Volunteers

Notable omissions: Ole Miss, Auburn

Sorry, but we need to go back to this. Other than the Alabama game – which has an actual date in the rivalry name – and the season enders, there is no conference matchup more associated with a time on the schedule than Florida-Tennessee. Putting that game in November (November!) is such a self-inflicted error it feels intentional. If we get a marketing campaign next year declaring that the game is “back when it belongs” you’ll know exactly what happened here.

Ole Miss Rebels

Notable omissions: Alabama, Tennessee, Vanderbilt

So much of recent Mississippi history (non-Egg Bowl division) revolved around upsets and near upsets of Alabama, and especially given Lane Kiffin’s former employment in Tuscaloosa it feels like a gaping hole to not have the Tide on the schedule. Also for Kiffin-related reasons, it’s a shame we haven’t gotten another matchup with Tennessee.

We poke fun at the former permanent cross-division rivalries a fair bit, but Ole Miss-Vanderbilt was one that at least made some sense. Call it the Sperry Bowl, Khaki Bowl, Country Club Cup, whatever you want but the schools have played each other nearly 100 times and it was a game that just kind of made sense.

That said, this is a team with genuine playoff aspirations and they managed to draw just about every single other school in the conference that also only thinks they can make the dance. You might as well call this the bracket busters schedule.

South Carolina Gamecocks

Notable omissions: Georgia, Florida, Tennessee

South Carolina has played in the SEC for my entire lifetime, but that’s not that long in the grand scheme of things. For as established as the Gamecocks feel (especially with further expansion now unfolded), most of their historic opponents are still in the ACC. Losing the three SEC opponents the Gamecocks have played the most often feels especially odd given that relatively short history.

Much like Ole Miss, South Carolina has real hope to make (and win a game in) the playoffs and this lineup provides plenty of firepower to see just how high Shane Beamer’s team can climb. It feels ungodly that South Carolina-Oklahoma is a conference game, but that won’t make it any less fun once kickoff hits.

Vanderbilt Commodores

Notable omissions: Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Ole Miss

Dumping most of the traditional SEC East opponents and also the permanent cross-division rivalry with Mississippi just makes this feel so much different than a typical Vandy schedule, to the point above this matters a lot more to Vanderbilt fans than it does to Georgia but the feelings of both are supposed to count the same in the conference offices. That said, there’s now a late season run that includes Alabama, LSU, Texas and another shot at Hugh Freeze – even if it’s a little off you’ve got to admit it’s interesting.

Auburn Tigers

Notable omissions: LSU, Florida, Tennessee, the Mississippi schools

The Iron Bowl is at the end of the season, so they got that right. Otherwise, the Tigers don’t get any of the conference opponents they’ve played most often outside their two big rivalries, and really only have one truly interesting stretch of the season. This schedule is pretty much the argument that conference expansion dilutes the product in nutshell, because if you can make Auburn uninteresting you’ve really done something amazing.

Kentucky Wildcats

Notable omissions: N/A

Look, the schedule can be correct without being good. The Tennessee game was more fun when it was the last game of the season and played for a wooden beer barrel, but it’s also a game the Wildcats have won 26 times in 120 meetings. Until Kentucky regains some of the momentum built early in Mark Stoops’ tenure, I’m not sure any schedule is going to be particularly interesting.

Mississippi State Bulldogs

Notable omissions: Auburn, Alabama, LSU

The Bulldogs are somehow the most-played opponent of a few marquee SEC West teams and they don’t have any of them on the schedule this year. I’m not sure anyone is going to miss having a trip to Starkville on the calendar specifically, but it does feel like this is where the regional spite holding together the conference starts to erode.

Missouri Tigers

Notable omissions: N/A

There just isn’t an SEC schedule you can draw up for Mizzou that’s going to look right, even in 2025. Sorry.