Quote Originally Posted by Quaoarsking View Post
4 pods
A&M, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss
Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma
Alabama, Auburn, Kentucky, Vanderbilt
Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina
All 4 pods as balanced as they can be competitively and geographically tight

Play 10 game conference schedule: the 3 in your pod, plus 2 of the 4 in each other pod, plus 1 more game to preserve rivalries:

Texas - Texas A&M
Auburn - Georgia
Ole Miss - Vanderbilt
Mississippi State - Kentucky
LSU - Arkansas
South Carolina - Missouri
Alabama - Tennessee
Florida - Oklahoma (not really a rivalry but good game)

If your permanent rivalry gets drawn as a rotating opponent (it will half the time), play another team of similar level. You could probably set it up so that everybody has 2 permanent rivals, and you draw whichever 1 isn't on your rotating schedule, but it would take careful setting up of the schedules. That would allow games like Alabama-LSU and maybe A&M-Oklahoma to become annual events.
Why would you separate texas and aTm?

I'd go...
Texas, aTm, Oklahoma, LSU
State, bama, OM, auburn
Mizzou, ark, Kentucky, tenn
Georgia, Florida, SC, vandy

Something like that.