At the 2013 Southeastern Conference spring meetings, mere months after the league conducted its first football season with 14 member institutions, Alabama coach Nick Saban pushed for a nine-game conference schedule.
"I am absolutely in the minority," Saban said in a news conference. "Everybody has their reasons, but the biggest thing we all need to do in some of these decisions we're making about who we're playing and what we do is, 'What about the fans?' One of these days they're going to quit coming to the games because they're going to stay home and watch it on TV.
"Everybody's going to say, 'Why aren't you coming to the games? Well, if you play somebody good, we would come to the game.' That should be the first consideration. Nobody is considering them."
Saban may finally get his wish, though he may not be coaching by the time it comes to fruition.
The SEC will conduct its spring meetings next week in Destin, Florida, for the first time since 2019, with the past two events held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic. It's also the league's first spring gathering since it announced last summer that it would be expanding to 16 members with the scheduled arrival of Oklahoma and Texas before the 2025 season.
One significant topic certain to be discussed next week and voted on in the months ahead will be whether the SEC should remain at eight league games or finally move to nine, with either decision likely to be accompanied by the removal of the Eastern and Western divisions that were implemented in 1992 when Arkansas and South Carolina were added to form a 12-team conference.
Since Missouri and Texas A&M joined in 2012, the league has employed two seven-team divisions and a 6-1-1 scheduling format - playing all six teams in your division, one permanent opponent from the opposite division and one foe from the opposite division that rotates. That rotating opponent instantly became an issue due to the infrequency in which certain teams met.
Missouri will be making its first-ever trip to Auburn in late September, for example, and Georgia won't make its first-ever visit to Texas A&M until 2024.
"We have to put teams through campuses with greater frequency," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey recently told ESPN. "Once every 12 years is not a wise approach."
POTENTIAL FORMATS
Both ESPN and Sports Illustrated reported this week that the league has a preferred model should either the eight- or nine-game schedule be selected after more than 30 options were considered.
Should the league remain with an eight-game schedule, it could adopt a 1-7 format in which each team has just one permanent opponent and rotates the other seven. This model would protect rivalries such as Alabama-Auburn, Florida-Georgia and Mississippi State-Ole Miss, but matchups such as Alabama-LSU, Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia would no longer occur on an annual basis.
Tennessee's permanent opponent in the 1-7 proposal would be Vanderbilt.
A nine-game schedule would contain a larger inventory of quality television matchups and would likely be accompanied by a 3-6 format in which each team would have three permanent opponents and six rotating foes. This would save the annual Alabama-Tennessee and Auburn-Georgia contests, but having nine games would result in half the league having five home games in a given season and the other half having just four.
Implementing nine games also would challenge the ability to attain bowl eligibility. South Carolina, which has three 6-6 regular-season records in the past eight years, ends every November facing state rival and Atlantic Coast Conference power Clemson.
With either the 1-7 or 3-6 model, each SEC team would be able to host and travel to every other league member over a four-year period, allowing unique matchups such as Georgia-Oklahoma and Tennessee-Texas to occur with legitimate frequency.
Two eight-team tiers, according to Sports Illustrated, would be used for scheduling purposes in the 3-6 format. The stronger tier would contain Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M, while the other would have Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
Each team would play two permanent opponents from its own tier and one permanent foe from the other tier.
Such a divvying of tiers certainly would resonate in Tennessee, with the Volunteers having won 13 SEC titles to match Georgia for second in the conference behind Alabama's 29. Yet the past few years have comprised the worst stretch in Tennessee history, as the Vols are just 85-88 since the start of Phillip Fulmer's final season in 2008, which includes a 40-74 record within the league.
When the SEC first split into divisions, the league took Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee and put three on each side. Those six programs have combined to win all 30 conference championship games since, though the Vols have the fewest titles (two) of the six and the most distant championship (1998) as well.
AP photo by Charlie Riedel / Fans begin to fill the stands at Lucas Oil Stadium before the College Football Playoff championship game between SEC powers Alabama and Georgia on Jan. 10 in Indianapolis.ALL ON THE TABLE
Hammering out a scheduling format well before the 2025 season is more of a pressing need than what to do after 2025, when the current, 12-year College Football Playoff agreement expires, but that is expected to be a Destin topic as well.
There was momentum this time last year for expanding the four-team field to 12 even before the existing deal was up. When the conference landscape shook last July, however, with the revealing that the Sooners and Longhorns would be bolting the Big 12, conference commissioners no longer seemed to be on the same page.
The 12-team proposal officially was axed in February.
Sankey was not happy about the way in which the playoff discourse crumbled and has asked league administrators to consider all sorts of postseason options. The most radical is the SEC staging its own eight-team playoff and the winner facing the best team outside of the league for the national title.
"We have an incredibly strong league, one that will be even stronger once Oklahoma and Texas join," Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin recently told ESPN. "The focus should be on how we as a league use that strength to further position the SEC as we face new realities. Commissioner Sankey has encouraged our athletic directors to think creatively, and an SEC-only playoff is a different idea that we should absolutely consider an option."
The SEC has never been in a stronger position to throw its weight around, having won 12 of the past 16 national championships with five different members: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia and LSU. Alabama has won half of those titles, but two of the past three have been won by LSU in 2019 and Georgia last season.
When Oklahoma and Texas move into the neighborhood, 11 of the 16 football programs - all but Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina and Vanderbilt - will have recognized national championships.
Incredibly strong league indeed.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.