SEC schedule should be fair

The SEC spring meetings, which begin this week, always bring out the constructive critic in me.Today's target: the SEC football schedule.The SEC could improve its method of determining division champions.That would mean putting an end to non-divisional rivalries on an annual basis.Translation: Tennessee and Alabama wouldn't play every year. Neither would Georgia and Auburn.Traditionalists might cringe at the thought. But the SEC shoved tradition aside a long time ago when it went to divisional play. And rivalries that affect four teams shouldn't rule the day in a 12-team conference.LSU and Florida also play every year, but do you think their fans would withdraw into a catatonic state if the teams played every two years? As strong as those programs are, they probably would prefer not playing every season.My scheduling plan would favor fairness over tradition and would involve seeding of sorts.There's a fairly clear-cut line separating the top three teams from the bottom three teams in each division. Although that could change from year-to-year, you can count on Auburn, Alabama and LSU being the most consistently successful programs in the West. You could say the same for Florida, Georgia and UT in the East.Under my plan, each team would rotate its three non-divisional opponents every year.The same three teams always would be lumped together.In the East, UT, Georgia and Vanderbilt would form one threesome; Florida, South Carolina and Kentucky would comprise the other.In the West, LSU, Ole Miss and Arkansas would be in one group; Auburn, Alabama and Mississippi State would be in the other.UT, Georgia and Vanderbilt would play LSU, Ole Miss and Arkansas one year; and Auburn, Alabama and Mississippi State the next year. Florida, South Carolina and Kentucky would play the alternate threesome from the West each year.So what if you wouldn't have UT-Alabama and Auburn-Georgia on an annual basis. It's not as though the rivalries would vanish from the face of college football. Those teams still would play every other year.You never will achieve true balance unless you go to an 11-game league schedule.However, you could avoid the Georgia-Florida scenario of the upcoming season.They will be consensus top-two picks in the East, and both should be ranked in the top five nationally. But they won't be on equal footing in conference play.Georgia will play LSU, Auburn and Alabama from the West. Florida will play LSU, Ole Miss and Arkansas.Which schedule would you prefer?UT also would benefit from altering the conference schedule.Alabama will only get better under coach Nick Saban, and Florida already has won one national championship under coach Urban Meyer. Under the current scheduling format, UT must play both teams every year. Things will get even tougher when LSU, which is averaging 9.8 wins a year this decade, rotates onto the schedule.In UT's dreadful 5-6 season of 2005, you could fill a book with all that went wrong.One chapter should include the schedule, which included road games at LSU, Florida and Alabama. UT was fortunate to win one of those games.The SEC is supposed to be tough. It doesn't have to be that tough.(Contact John Adams of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at XX(at)xxx.com.)