Some "whining" from Steve Spurrier about the SEC unbalanced scheduling.
Don't ask me why the SEC released its 2014 schedule just days before the 2013 season, but that's exactly what happened Wednesday. And here's all you need to know: Florida plays both Alabama and LSU in 2014 and Georgia and South Carolina play neither.
As one Gator fan emailed me Wednesday: "How is this even remotely fair?"
Answer: It's not. In fact, it's a travesty and makes you realize that Steve Spurrier was right last year when he proposed a new way for the SEC to choose division champs. Spurrier said back in the spring of 2012 that the SEC should pick its division champions based on division record instead of overall conference record.
I agree, for any conference that is split into divisions, the only fair way to determine a division champion is your record in that division. Your record against the other division should only be used for tiebreaking purposes. Of course in conferences like the MAC, who have an uneven number of teams, it becomes more complicated so I would suggest the following:
East division teams play 6 games in division and two crossover games, while the West plays 5 division and three crossover games. This can be accomplished by using a nine week conference schedule where every team has one bye week (for the purposes of simplicity I drew up a schedule where each East team is off for one of the nine weeks and three west teams are off on the other two, because you have to have an odd number for every week but other combinations would work too). This would also allow teams to schedule a non conference game later in the season if they'd like on their off-conference week. Only division games would count for the division championship, the cross division games would only be used as a tie-breaking criteria.