2025-2026 NCAA Football Season Thread • Page 36

I made a guess at who each would be and got 65% right. Nice. Tennessee, Bama, Florida, and Georgia I was 100% on my guess.
Tennessee definitely gets off "easy" on the history of two of those matchups.

 

Losing LSU-Florida every year is probably my personal "really hate that decision" of the groupings. That's been one of the best "West vs East" annual matchups from the last 25 years.

 

I would have liked to see Tennessee/Florida stay on the schedule

 

A few more tidbits of scheduling info:

They ranked the sixteen teams on the cumulative of the last four years (including B12 data for Texas/OU) to determine the balance of the distribution of annual rivals. I've only seen Ole Miss was 4 and Auburn was 14. But we can probably assume Georgia and Bama were 1-2 and Kentucky-Miss State were 15-16.

Some games that take place this season will take place next season at the same venue (ie, Tennessee could host Georgia in back to back seasons) instead of the traditional reversal. They tried to mitigate it, but couldn't eliminate it.

SEC teams with an away power conference game in 2026 (ie, Tennessee @ GTech) will have 5 SEC home games to "balance" the schedule. Not sure if annual games like UF-FSU, SCar-Clemson, UGA-GTech are given the same consideration, but I can't see why it wouldn't.

 

Yeah wtf

 

This just came across my Facebook feed and it made me remember us talking about it a few weeks back. What a top 10.

 

Boston college beat the absolute fuck out of tech that year I believe.

 

Delete cal, Stanford. And smu

 

This was pat white / steve slaton West Virginia squad, right? If so, they were maybe my favorite offensive duo outside of the Reggie bush USC years to watch.

 

Yeah didn’t they lose the backyard brawl in the season finale to fall out of the BCS title game

 

Tennessee played LSU in the SEC Championship that season. It was like a three or four way tie in the east, iirc.

 

Yes, it was absolutely brutal. And then they smoked Oklahoma in the fiesta bowl.

 

WVU probably wont ever get that close again.

 

Still mad that USF shit the bed by losing their next 3 games after starting 6-0

 

What if I felt poor before seeing that

 

Please. Bama owned that rivalry and LSU is the one breathing a sigh of relief. I don’t know a single person who is happy that game was ditched in favor of Miss State. Can’t speak for Auburn though.

 

Ok state fired gundy

 

I mean, I’m sure it’s the administrations wanting “scheduling parity” (AKA an easier schedule), not the fanbases. I’d blame LSU too if TAMU wasn’t the game that feels the least necessary of their locked opponents and Bama for TAMU feels like an easy swap that makes them reasonably happy if Bama were to play ball

 

oh shit, forgot all about Nintendogs. What a name lol

 

It just feels like there’s too many factors and variables to give every team what they wanted and a fair shake. But, to me, Bama/LSU was a top tier game everyone wanted to watch. It blows my mind they did away with it. I feel like Bama was fine playing that rivalry gauntlet as long as everyone else played a gauntlet. But I dunno what was said in discussions. I’m just bummed they went the route they went bc that was almost always my favorite fucking game each year. I could never get hyped about playing Mississippi State.

 

this fucking sucks. what the fuck.

 

Bummer