Florida is set to host Alabama on Saturday for the first time in a decade, which may sound crazy for two teams that are in the same conference. Dan Mullen would like to see that change.
Mullen told reporters this week that he would be in favor of the SEC making some schedule changes that would allow teams like Florida and Alabama to face each other more often. He suggests getting rid of permanent games and having the schedules rotate more.
“I think it would be really good for the league to have them more often, I think it would be exciting for the fans and all of that stuff,” Mullen said, via John Brice of FootballScoop.com. “I think what we’ve seen in football over the last couple of years, these rivalry games kind of come and go. This has been a big rivalry, I think it is really exciting the more you get to play different teams within your league.”
Florida and Alabama have met three times in the SEC Championship Game since 2014, which was their last regular-season meeting. Florida is in the SEC East while the Crimson Tide are in the SEC West. The two divisions only play two teams from the other each season — one permanent and one rotating. Nick Saban has said for quite some time that he thinks the SEC should schedule more in-conference games.
“I think ever since we went to more teams in the SEC, the only way to play everybody is to play more SEC games,” Saban said Wednesday. “I’ve been an advocate of that for some time with very little support. … I’ve always said it would be great if every player on your team got to play every school in the SEC in his career. With the current format, that’s just not possible.”
A lot of conferences schedule out-of-conference games because they want to create more marquee matchups. The SEC is the strongest conference in football, so they could do that without going outside the conference — especially when Texas and Oklahoma join. Perhaps that is something that will change in the coming years.
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