Phillip Marshall's blog on Auburn moving east

Yeah, UAt/UT needs to go.

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ETA: By the way, that would be my vote/opinion. I think Mizzou in the East is just as likely however.

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Not really, Mizzou is a long way for USCe, UF, and UGA.

You could also move both Alabama teams to the east and then trnasfer Kentucky or Vanderbilt to the West.

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You could also move both Alabama teams to the east and then trnasfer Kentucky or Vanderbilt to the West.

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lulz, you would like that.

Sorry, I cannot elaborate further on the term. Last time it got me banned.

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You could also move both Alabama teams to the east and then trnasfer Kentucky or Vanderbilt to the West.

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It would be too unbalanced then, with 5 of the "big 6" in the East. Why not move Florida to the west? They could keep Georgia as their annual inter-divisional opponent and preserve the Cocktail party. LSU would have to find another annual rival, and the available teams would be Auburn, Alabama and Tennessee. We could campaign for Alabama to be ours, while Mizzou and A&M could take Auburn and Tennessee.

That way, the Iron Bowl, Bama-UT, UF-UGa, Auburn-UGa and LSU-UF get preserved, while Auburn-UT, a historical rivalry, gets renewed. Florida could resume playing Ole Miss and Mississippi State every year like they used to before expansion. LSU keeps its traditional series with Florida, Alabama, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, and renews it's historic rivalry with Texas A&M.

The only matchups that get sacrificed are Alabama-Ole Miss, Alabama-MSU and the ones that were artificially created by expansion in 1992...Florida-Tennessee and LSU-Auburn, mainly, but also Auburn-everybody else in the West and Florida-everybody else in the East (besides Georgia).

Of course, we'd have to go to 9 SEC games in order to maintain annual inter-divisional games, or else we would be playing other interdivisional opponents only twice every 12 years. With a 9-game schedule and a 6-1-2 rotation, we'd play them twice every six years.

While I admit that I'm new to the SEC politics, seems to me that Auburn fans are a little bit too eager to make the move East, whether they think it will be for easier competition (doubtful over the long term), or, more likely, just as a way to stick to Bama by making them give up the Tennessee annual game.

As a newcomer, I don't want to cause any more disruption than necessary. I say put A&M in the West and Missouri in the East. A&M and Missouri can play each other as cross-divisional permanent opponents, or, Arkansas can play Missouri and we'll take Arkansas's place with USC. Hell, if LSU wants to get in on it, we could do a 3 way trade where Arkansas is paired with Missouri, LSU is paired with South Carolina, and A&M is paired Florida. Whatever works best for the conference as a whole is fine with me--just don't let West Virginia join and be paired up with A&M.

I think Auburn has always felt they belong in the Eastern division since before re-alignment began. If I am not mistaken they were in the Eastern division before.

Well, here is a break down of the times we have played teams in the East vs West.

UGA - 114
UF - 82
UT - 51
Vandy - 41
UK - 32

Total: 320

MSU - 84
Bama - 75
LSU - 45
Ole Miss - 35

Total: 239

Top 4 teams most played in East vs West (throwing out number 5 since we do not play ourselves in the West): 288 East vs 204 West.

I didn't include Arky and SC, neither of which we have played very often historically.

And 20 years ago (1992), this would be a lot more scewed to the East...