Auburn football: Fans share SEC pod ideas amid OU-UT rumors

Rumors are flying around the country as people anticipate the move of Oklahoma and Texas to the Southeastern Conference, where they’ll compete with the likes of Georgia, Alabama, and Auburn football.

Should the two obviously non-southeastern schools join the conference, there would have to be a restructuring of the SEC and the way the divisions are made up. The SEC East and West divisions would both have to receive a makeover to allow for the Sooners and Longhorns.

Some fans think that rather than just realigning the East and West, the format should be changed to pods, which would ensure protected rivalry games and allow more variety of games. Even the SEC Network proposed a hypothetical conference made up of four 4-team pods.

There would be a ton of factors involved in the creation of pods–rivalries, location, the balance of talent, but while it’s all speculation, fans weighed in on their pod preferences:

The greatest college football rivalry game must be protected, and putting Alabama and Auburn football in the same pod was quite popular. Most also placed UGA in Auburn’s pod, keeping the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry alive. However, it could be one of those non-pod rivalries if the Tigers were to end up with Tennessee or a Mississippi school.

Auburn was most frequently mentioned with Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida, and it seems that the fans value big games over the easiest path to a winning record.

Whether or not the SEC chooses to switch to the pod system, the addition of two more teams to the SEC will change college sports as we know it, not just in football but across all the other sports as well. Just imagine a 16-team SEC basketball tournament.

Until the confirmation, we’ll have to continue speculating where teams will end up and who Auburn football’s potential new opponents could be.