The Josh Innes Show - SEC Making The Right Moves

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Starting next year, the SEC will implement a 9 game conference schedule and will require leagues teams to play at least one power conference team out of conference. I like this. But, I want to live in a world where teams can schedule 3 solid out of conference games without fear of it costing them a spot in the playoff. We want better matchups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, everybody. Let's see here. First off, I want to thank people for sending me messages. I jokingly posted that screenshot of that call or that text from that guy yesterday or gal or whoever it was. And I just posted that on my story. And now I'm looking at my Instagram and I see a bunch of messages in here from people. So I very much appreciate that. Thank you. Let me look at some of these. It says, don't end the pod because of this idiot. I'm 43 and feel the same way you do. Keep doing what you do. and you do not puke what the fuck is he talking about i am not a puker i am not uh fuck this guy you rock thanks timmy t smith thank you that's very nice of you uh let's see this person jc says nah don't stop the podcast uh let's see let's see uh baytown something or another hell to the no you're the first thing i look up when i get off work to listen to the new episodes you posted for the day fuck that guy and his opinion boy i didn't realize so many people actually enjoy this I would never say it as mean as this guy, but there may be a valid thing or two. Really?

Well, what now please? Okay, I'm interested now, Hakeem. What is the valid point that was made? I'm genuinely curious. I'm not trying to fight with anybody here. But if we go back to that commentary, like, I don't know. I don't know what I do that would. Well, actually, I do know what I would do.

I have an opinion on things, and sometimes people disagree with those opinions. But, like, I'm reading this commentary here. If I go back to the message and read this, it's like, stop acting like you're your dad's age. I've never seen an almost 40-year-old dude want to pretend he's fucking 60. Talk about some new music. I don't, again, to the previous point of this, I don't talk about new music. I don't listen to a ton of new music. So I don't know what people want for me.

Your rambling's on about the good old days is awkward because you're not that fucking old, and that's why you should not shit on people with their ESPN nostalgia because, because, That's what you do. Again, okay. Well, look, I appreciate that there are people that have differing opinions of what we do. Hakeem, not a fan of the show. That's fine. Let's see here.

This person says, fuck that dude. Cool. This person says, or you can ignore the haters, which for the most part I do. Let's see. They just don't know, says Pluggy Coogan. See, some people remember this shit. Random one. You're the reason I tune into WLZ never stop shitting on people.

That's someone from Detroit. Thank you. That's very cool. Anywho. Now, on with what we need to do here, but I wanted to get to those because I didn't see those when I recorded earlier today. So let's play some commercials, and we will continue. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner, Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Sambor. Kate McKinnon and Allison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now.

All right, so SEC, I do need to get into this. The SEC with a nine-game conference, a nine-game conference schedule, so they're going to eliminate one of the shitty directional schools they all play, which in theory is good, right, because it gives you. more good matchups. Just from a viewership standpoint, just strictly from a, I want more games that matter. You only get 12 of these things, and usually three of them are throwaways. In a good year, you'll schedule one good team.

Like LSU will play Clemson or LSU has played USC or LSU has played, back in the day, when LSU was winning these first games of the season, they'd play in North Carolina or an Oregon or a TCU to open the season. They played Virginia Tech early in the season in 2007. They played Virginia Tech. I want to say it was an O2 early in the season as well. So, like, you get a lot of those things like that. But big picture, LSU will play one good out-of-conference opponent,

and then LSU will play one kind of middling kind of middle tier, like, oh, there's an Appalachian state or there's a UAB, kind of like an old school conference USA type school. And then LSU will play like Northwestern or LSU will play, I don't know, insert whatever, ULL, UL, ULM, whatever, so Southeastern. Never Tulane for the most part recently, but like those kind of games, and that's what you'll get. So in theory, by adding one other conference game, you are adding a game that matters and you are eliminating a game that doesn't matter.

So on its surface, this is good, this is better. But let's look into some of this. This is from the SEC. Adding a ninth SEC game underscores our university's commitment to delivering the most competitive football schedule in the nation, said Greg Sanky. This format protects rivalries, increases competitive balance, and paired with our requirement to play an additional power opponent, ensures SEC teams are well prepared to compete and succeed in the college football playoff. So there is a requirement that you must play a school that's in a Power 5 conference, which is good. I'm cool with that. That is good.

I say Power 5. Just a power opponent in general. Power 4, whatever they call it now. But that's good. Under the new format, the SEC will continue to play without divisions. Each school will play three annual opponents focused on maintaining traditional rivalries, and the remaining six games will rotate among the rest of the league opponents. Here's where I have an issue with this, and it's an obvious issue.

And this was the case back when LSU's every year opponent was Florida, for instance, when they were divisions. LSU on the schedule every year played Florida. And then I think Alabama's, you know, basically it was a, you got a common, But you got a yearly opponent, a guaranteed opponent that was outside of your division. So when it was the East versus the West, LSU would always play Florida. And that would, of course, include like, hey, this year we're going to play South Carolina. This year we're going to play Georgia.

But they always played Florida. And it was always exciting. But then you'd get Alabama, who had, I believe they had Vanderbilt as their annual opponent out of the East, which you can obviously tell there's a discrepancy there. even with Vanderbilt being the best they are, and even with Vanderbilt beating Alabama last year, if you have Vanderbilt on your yearly schedule versus Florida, just in talent alone, there's a gigantic discrepancy between those two schools. LSU at an unfair advantage. Alabama has an disadvantage. Alabama has an unfair advantage.

Each team will face every other SEC program, at least once every two years, with every opponent home and away over four years. That's fine. SEC's teams are still required to schedule at least one additional high-quality non-conference opponent from the ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, or Notre Dame. Fuck Notre Dame so hard. Like, good for them that they get to live in this world of not having a conference, they're unaffiliated, they're independent, and they get to have their world where, like, they can just be basically grandfathered into this playoff. You win 10 games, you're pretty much going to get in if you're Notre Dame. But, like, the idea that it's play a team from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, or Notre Dame.

The SEC will continue to evaluate its policies to ensure the continued scheduling of non-conference opponents from the Power 4. Now, there's also no guarantee that when you schedule that team and they end up on your schedule that, you know, four years down the road when you actually play them, they'll be good. Like, there are a lot of instances where when you schedule a team and they schedule these things years out, obviously, you know, if you go out and you schedule, I'm trying to think of a power team that's fallen off a cliff that, you know, was once good and is now kind of, you know, down. I think Florida is an okay example. Now, granted, you're not going to schedule Florida because they're in the conference. But if you were looking for a team like a Florida who historically is a very good program, but in recent history has been mediocre, you know, when you schedule them, it seems a lot better versus when you actually play them.

So I think that comes into it too. Like you're going to judge people and say, well, you only played this shitty team this year. Well, yeah, this team was a lot worse. You were like Michigan was kind of middling for a while before Michigan bounced back. You know, if you schedule Michigan, you know, when they're great, and then five years from that, play them and they're not great, you know, like I get it. And there are also varying levels of power conference schools. That's the other thing you have to take into consideration. First off, the ACC for the most part is shit.

In our universe, it's the Big Ten and the SEC who are really the power conferences. And in reality, it's a handful of teams at the top of each of those. There are more talented. There's a larger number of talented teams in the SEC. It doesn't mean they're good teams, but there is more talent on more teams in the SEC than there is in the Big Ten. The Big Ten is extremely top-heavy, and you get your Ohio states and your Michigan's and your Penn States. And schools like that, on a given year, Wisconsin may be better than they are in some other years. Illinois may pop somewhere, but they're never going to be a true power to anybody.

Iowa has their moments. Minnesota has their moments. Of course, you've got to throw in USC, I guess, in Oregon. I forget that those schools are in the Big Ten, which is. is absurd that those schools are in the Big Ten. It's one of the biggest turnoffs about college football now. I liked regionality. You can call me a square, call me an old guy,

guy who texted me yesterday, sorry that I'm talking about the old nostalgic things I like, my fucking bad, but I really miss the regionality of college sports. That's what I enjoyed the most. I enjoyed that there was a Pac-12 or a Pac-10 or a Pac-8, and it became the Pac-10, Pac-12, and had whatever number of teams it ended up with at the end.

I like the USC and UCLA and Oregon and Oregon State and Washington and Washington State and Arizona and Arizona State are living in that universe. I like the regionality of it. It's nice that you get more, you know, better matchups now that you'll get, you know, an Ohio State versus an Oregon or an Oregon versus a whomever, a Michigan, and you'll get more of those and that's cool. But I liked the regionality of it. The regionality of college football made it appealing. The reason why there's such a passion for the SEC for a lot of people that are in SEC areas is because, because the SEC represents a bygone era. It represents a South that is being taken away from them.

Like, that's part of the vibe of the SEC. The Southern people, there is no more regional, no more prideful group of people than the people in the South and how they feel about their region, their state, their teams. So the reason why that whole SEC, SEC thing, and the reason there's an SEC network and all of this shit, is because people are addicted to it down there and it matters more to them. But that's great that it's there. And then you had the regionality of the Big Ten,

which is essentially still in place. All of the main Big Ten teams are still there. But then you got the Pack 12 and it's like, I don't want to see USC in the Big Ten. USC should not be in a conference in which there's a possibility they are playing Rutgers and Iowa every year. Like I don't want to see that universe. I miss my old universe. Sorry for waxing nostalgic about it. Sorry that I've shit on things that you're nostalgic about.

I'll try to do better next time. Several ACC athletic directors told ESPN they see no reason traditional ACC SEC rivalries will be impacted, but future scheduled games with the SEC could be canceled. I forgot about that because you get your Georgia and your Georgia Tech, and you get your Clemsons in South Carolina's and your Florida's and your Florida State. Florida State's in Miami and that type of stuff, really Florida and Florida State. So I could see where that would be impacted, and people love their rivalries, but the only people that truly care about those rivalries are the people that are in the cities of those rivalries.

I don't think here we are in 2025, people are like, oh my God, it's Florida State versus Florida. I've got to watch this if I'm up in Kansas City, Missouri. I think the people in Florida give a shit about that, but outside of there, I don't think people care. That's the thing about rivalries. We were kind of force-fed rivalries by ESPN and other places over the years, and we're kind of told that we need to believe that these rivalries are super relevant to everybody across the country. It's like Duke versus North Carolina. Twice a year you'd see Duke versus North Carolina in prime time on E&N.

And then as you grow up and realize there's a world outside of ESPN, you're kind of like, why the hell do I care about Duke versus North Carolina? I'm not from North Carolina. I don't root for Duke or North Carolina. Why the hell do I care about this? The people there do it. The Tobacco Road people care about it. But Josh Ennis down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, up in Detroit, Michigan doesn't really give a shit about it. I don't give a shit about the Yankees and the Red Sox either.

But the people in Boston do and the people in New York do. And so, like, if it gets rid of these kind of rivalries, like that would suck for those places. But me, as someone who doesn't root for South Carolina or Clemson, I don't care if they play each other every year. As someone who doesn't root for Alabama or Auburn, I don't care if there's an Iron Bowl every year. Like, I'm sure there will be because they're in the same conference and they're not going to do away with something that's that important to that area. But it doesn't really impact my life. ACCCC Commissioner Jim Phillips said his league is not planning to move from its eight-game conference schedule. Why would you?

You play in the shitty ACC, go play your shitty ACC schedule, and then go out and play four shit. shitty schools and get yourself into the playoff. What the SEC is doing with this is they are going basically one of the big knocks on the SEC. Not necessarily true, but it is a knock, a criticism that comes to the SEC,

which is, great, you play your tough conference schedule, but who do you play out of there? UL.M. and Alabama, South Alabama, and Alabama State and the SWAC and the MEAC and the conference USA, blah, blah, blah. When do you play anybody worth a shit? So the SEC said, fine, we'll put our money where our mouth

is and we'll play each other nine times, nine times. We'll play conference games nine times. We are forced to play a team from a power conference, and then you've got two shitty games in there. And those aren't guaranteed to be total dog shit games either. They probably will be because you need just two guaranteed wins in there. So you're probably not going to schedule two out of conference. But the way that this whole thing is set up now, which is positive for college football, is we are not punishing teams for losing a singular game. We are no longer in a universe where when the season starts, if you lose that opener, you're fucked for the rest of the year. We have created a world, much like college basketball, where playing better games out of conference is actually to your benefit.

Now, again, you can't lose five games and make the playoff, but if you're a two-loss team out of the SEC and your schedule included out of conference games against Ohio State and Miami, including then you're also in your conference schedule, then you're going to be rewarded for going 10 and 2 when one of your losses is to Ohio State and one is to Georgia. You're going to be rewarded for that kind of thing, and that's good. as they expand the playoff, which is going to inevitably happen because we have these meaningless bowl games that no one gives a shit about, we're going to expand this playoff and it's going to get to however many teams it's going to get to, 16, 24, 32, however many teams are actually going to

get into this thing, whether it might end up like the FCS playoff or there's 32 teams, whatever. It could get to that. It's going to get to a point, and this is good for college football, that we are going to get better regular season games, more exciting regular season games, because you can schedule those now, because a loss or two doesn't cut your balls off. We're not there yet. We're getting there, but we're not at a point yet. And I hope we get there and we will get there where, like the old argument was

the college football regular season was so great because every game had a playoff feel. And I agree that there is an element of truth to that. Being a kid, growing up in Baton Rouge, watching LSU, every week was a big deal. There was a huge, like, you know, obviously not ULM, obviously not Southeastern, obviously not, you know, Appalachian State. But every SEC game mattered because you knew, for the most part, that if you fucked up, you were behind the eight ball and you had no more room for error. And depending on when you lost, which was the biggest farce in all of this, depending on when you lost, mattered. You lose week one to Virginia Tech. You can then rattle off 11 in a row and people

think you're great again. That was the biggest farce of the way things used to be and kind of still are. That losing early in the season was good, but like you could win 11 games in a row and lose your last game of the year by a field goal. And it's like, no, I'm sorry. Turns out these guys fucking suck. Nope, they're not any good. And that part of it was bullshit. But now where we sit is as they get to a point that they're going to expand this

playoff even more is we can get like, you know, LSU is playing Clemson. We're going to get to a point where it's closer to the NFL where you can play an amazing game in week one, week two, week three. We could get to a point where you're not playing. If it's this nine game SEC schedule, we may get to a point. where we see three decent out-of-conference games and your schedule is fucking awesome. Now, will we ever get to that, you know, maybe? Will we get to that soon?

Probably not. You know, every team still wants to have a rent-a-win or two on there just to not get their guys beat up. But you're not at a point now where the total, the total of wins is going to matter. If you get to 16, 24, 30, whatever, 32, whatever number of teams, you're not going to be at a point where you're like, God, I must get to 10 wins to get in. If there's 32 teams, you can go 9 and 3 and get into a playoff. And that should be the case.

If there's a larger, you know, crew of teams. If there's only 12 teams that get in, you can't really go 9 and 3 and get in. If you've got 20-something or 30-something teams, you can have more teams to get in. You could probably implement buys into this thing as well, and it will change the game that way. The college football playoff has made progress, but we're not at perfection as to how strength of schedule will be used in the selection process. Well, it should be. The teams you play, if you are playing better teams, your losses are different than if they are to shitty teams, and you could argue, depending on how the game was played, how it was ended, if it was

controversial. Look at South Carolina. I'll give South Carolina credit. South Carolina should have beaten LSU last year. They had LSU beaten. It was 17-0. There was a dicey call at the end of the game. Honestly, it was a shitty call at the end of the game that cost them the game. They still got in position to kick a field goal to tie it at the end and missed it. That should be viewed differently than if SMU beats up on, I don't know, insert shitty, what's the one, like a shitty ACC school. Think of a shitty ACC school. I'm drawing a blank on shitty ACC schools here.

But like something like that, you know, or a shitty out of conference game. Like that should matter. The number of wins should not be the great determining factor in this system. Now, if it were like the NFL and you've got to win a division to get in, then that's different. But it's not. At least it, well, it is sort of at this point because winning the SEC get you a guaranteed spot, whatever. But it should not matter. Like we shouldn't just go, well, they're 12 and 0.

They're in. How you play, who you play, who you decide to play should play a factor. Now, if you lose all those games, it shouldn't. But if you're, again, South Carolina is a great case in that. South Carolina and their losses, I mean, South Carolina lost to a pretty good LSU team and got screwed. If they win that game and win 10 games, are they in last year? So, I don't know, I find it interesting. And it's good that they're going to nine games.

They should go to nine games. Hell, just play the whole thing as a conference schedule. Play 11 conference games for all I care and play one out of conference game and guarantee that that game has to be against a Power 5 score. I keep saying Power 5, but a Power Conference school. Bang, there you go. Like, I'm not some SEC honk. You know, there's a lot of people I find extremely annoying.

and people who work for the SEC network and these people that just swing their dicks and are like mouthpieces for the SEC. Like, I'm not some big believer that just because you play in the SEC, you're a good football team. And I think that's the belief of a lot of people in SEC world is like your shittiest SEC team is better than your best blank school. Well, it's a case-by-case basis.

But like people, there's shitty schools like Vanderbilt and other places that like the dick swing over the fact they're in the SEC because they're elevated by the company they keep. But I don't know. All things can see. though getting to nine games pretty solid nine game conference schedule i like it i like the fact that you have to play an out of conference schedule that includes one power school now there is a quirk in there where again if you like who's the bottom of the barrel in the acc find your bottom of the

barrel acc school wake forest like put like oh no we scheduled we're playing wake forest well you schedule wake forest out of the acc it's technically a power school but what happens whenever you know lSU is playing clemson or ohio or or whoever you're is playing Ohio State. Texas is playing Ohio State or something to start the year. There is a difference, right? And I think that will be held against those teams. It should be. And like, it's, to me, a perfect world as you have divisions, you go out, you win your conference, you get into a playoff, you do that. I like the NFL playoffs. I like that there's no controversy. I like that it's not determined by people in a fucking

room trying to tell you who should be in the playoff and who shouldn't be. I like that we know the rules going in and you know it needs to be accomplished. I like the fact that there's a chance that you might go 12 and 5 and miss the playoffs because of a wild card situation and you didn't win your division. I'm okay with that because we know it going in. I don't like the fact that the college football playoff is determined by a bunch of Jemokes. Jamokes are humans. Humans have biases. I don't like that world. That's not a world that I like living in. But as long as that is the world we live in, I like the fact that you reward teams for going out and saying, let's let our nuts hang and let's play this better team. You should look at the

schedule they're playing. Now, the harder part is, if you're in a shitty conference. Like if you're like, that's where I draw kind of like a caveat. Because let's say you're in the ACC and you're a really good football team, but no one's going to reward you for beating up on Wake Forest and beating up on Florida State if they suck that particular year, beating up on SMU or whoever it is you're beating up on in that conference, right? They're going to punish you because your conference sucks.

That part is unfortunate because I guarantee you there are really good fucking football teams that are just, they happen to be in a conference and they dominate that. that conference. Now, that team's probably not going to get left out. If you go 11 and 1 in a good conference, you're not going to get left out of the playoff more than likely. Because it shouldn't be a world where it's just SEC and Big 10 teams like they all want to have. Maybe at some point it will be. They'll just be a super conference of SEC and big 10 and they play against each other every year and that's how the champion is determined. They determine their own champion. Maybe there is no NCAA champion anymore. But that's the caveat, right? The SEC, whether we think

it's an up year or down year for the SEC, you're guaranteed to play some pretty good football teams on a regular basis and talents. Even if they're not winning football teams, they are stocked with NFL level talent at most of these places. You're guaranteed to get that. You're not guaranteed to get that at Wake Forest, and you're not guaranteed to get that at some of the other ACC or Big 12 schools or even Big Ten schools. The Big Ten can swing its dick all at once, and yes, it's top heavy, and yes, there's USC, and yes, there's Oregon, and yes, there's Ohio State, and yes, there's Michigan, and yes, there's Penn State. There's also fucking Indiana. There's also, you know, schools like that.

So either way, I'm fine with nine games as it's set up now. I think that's good. It's better than it was. And until we get to a point where, you know, 30-something teams are getting into the playoff, I think this is a solid solution for that. All right. Anyway, more to come.