What about a new SEC 16 with four divisions.

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SEC 16 West: LSU, Texas A&M, Miss State and Ole Miss

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Do you really want LSU to be forever stuck with these other three teams? I'd be less unhappy with this if one of the Mississippis and Arkansas traded spots. But not happy, mind you. Not happy.

I like it except...

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SEC 16 South: Alabama, Tennessee, Vandy and Kentucky

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at this point...that's three gimme wins for Bama. not cool.

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9 conference games

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that is brutal if there's not playoff format. And how are you going to crown a champion? Play semifinal games AND a championship game? Then you're champion has played 11 SEC teams. THEN, they've got to go beat somebody else for the NC? frick that.

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Rotate SEC 16 Football Conference Championship game: New Orleans (Superdome), Dallas (Jerry’s World) and Atlanta Dome.

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Why rotate? I don't like the Superdome being considered anyway. The Sugar Bowl is in New Orleans and possibly the NCCG--nobody wants to go there twice. I understand LSU fans wanting the advantage of having it in New Orleans occassionaly, but that's not a good enough reason for me. Rotate it between Dallas and Atlanta if you have to, but I'd be fine with having it in Dallas permanently. Not sure the City of Atlanta would be too thrilled with that, though.

Who says Auburn wants to join the East? I think its a matter of if needed, we'll do it.

Would it be impossible to play a doubleheader for possible semi-finals games? Have one kickoff at noon and the other kickoff at 7 or 8. It would be cool to have 4 SEC teams in the same city with their fans.

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9 conference games

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i think that if conferences increase membership to 16, then number of conference games will have to increase beyond 9 games, maybe even to the realm of 11 or 12, which would increase the overall number of games in the season, unless teams were to play conference games exclusively. This is an aspect that seems to be overlooked, or is at least not being discussed, in all this fantasy drafting of teams to conferences.

If the season were to extend to 14-15 reg season games, AND add conf championship games, AND add playoff/bowl games to the end of the season, you are looking at teams potentially playing 16-18 games in a season. just dont see it happening.

I would swap Arkansas and TAMU... You might as well keep all the newcomers in the same division.

I've got to agree, Dice. Having Vandy and Kentucky in the same pod was a bit unfair (i.e. too easy for SC and TN).

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Pod 2 (preserves the Egg Bowl and LSU/Ole Miss. Mizzou is an outlier in any plan with these teams)
LSU
Ole Miss
Miss State
Mizzou

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Probably totally moot, but no to Mizzou in this already duller than dull pod. Let them go to your Pod 1 newbies, and put A&M in Pod 2 with LSU and the Mississippis.

The SEC is a little complicated because they will probably have to keep one fixed opponent from other divisions. But let's say you have the following divisions:

1 OU, OkS, Arky, MU
2 LSU, A&M, Ole Miss, MSU
3 Alabama, Auburn, UT, Vandy
4 Fla, UGA, USC, KY

With the following fixed opponents:

OU/Bama
Auburn/UGA
Florida/UT
LSU/Missouri
Arky/A&M
Ok State/USC
Ole Miss/Vandy
MSU/KY

These would generally do a good job of matching up similar quality programs from the different divisions (important to even out the schedule). Yes, LSU>MU but I thought the A&M/Arky history was more valuable than LSU/Arky so that's how it worked out

And for scheduling in general you would probably end up having to do some kind of layered schedule (I just proposed something similar for the PAC but here's how it might work for the SEC). First you make a list of every school in the conference:

1) Alabama
2) Ole Miss
3) Arky
4) A&M
5) Florida
6) Vandy
7) OU
8) South Carolina
9) Auburn
10) MSU
11) LSU
12) Missouri
13) UGA
14) KY
15) Ok State
16) Tennessee

then you set aside your 3 division games and one fixed opponent and rotate the four games among the remaining schools.

For Alabama this would mean (you play Auburn, OU, Tennessee, and Vandy every year with) a rotation of something like this in years 1&2:

Ole Miss
Arky
A&M
Florida

In years 3&4:

South Carolina
MSU
LSU
Missouri

In years 5&6:

UGA
KY
Ok State
Ole Miss