Two Alabama Greats Evaluate 9-Game SEC Schedule Proposal

Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer spoke about this on Tuesday, saying that he's "open to hearing conversations" and that this increase in the strength of schedule could impact the College Football Playoff committee's choices on Selection Sunday.

The CFP system was first used during the 2014-15 season, but from 1998-2013, the NCAA utilized the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Former Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron and running back Trent Richardson were very successful in this era as they each won multiple BCS National Championships with and without each other.

In the inaugural episode of THE DYNASTY: A Podcast on the Alabama Crimson Tide on Wednesday, McCarron and Richardson, alongside fellow host Chris Stewart, the sportscaster for the Crimson Tide Sports Network, discussed the hot topic of the 9-game SEC schedule proposal.

Here's what Richardson and McCarron had to say...

Trent Richardson

"I think this is the segment where we get a 'Hell nah.' Why? You're going to pay us––you're trying to pay us almost $100 million dollars more to beat up on each other, to give everybody else an opportunity, to get their rankings higher. It's not fair to those kids, man. I know the world is run by money, especially college football now.

"But man, don't do that to these kids because you're taking stuff from them when you do that. It's not fair to those kids that you're adding another game. And for me, if y'all are going to do stuff like this, get rid of the SEC Championship.

"It doesn't work for our kids and the SEC. It works for the ACC, Big Ten and all of the other conferences out there. It's just not a good taste for me to say that I'm going to put myself on the limb again. The school's going to get all the money, but to me it's not about the money––it's about the game. Why do you put these kids out there to destroy each other when we won't have another bid in the playoffs?"

AJ McCarron

“If I was [SEC commissioner] Greg Sankey, the way I would look at it is are we the best conference from top to bottom? I think from the top to the bottom, you're the best conference in college football by far. If you’re scheduling more games against yourself, it ends up hurting you more than it helps you.”

"I understand from a revenue sharing point, it's more money coming into the conference, which allows your school to have more money throughout the pot. My only thing though, and I'm sure there are SEC coaches who probably feel the same way, SEC coaches aren't keeping their jobs by not winning national championships.

“You get fired at a big SEC school because you don’t win a national championship. It's been proven with Jim McElwain...Dan Mullen [too]. These coaches are in and out of these programs because they're not winning and they're not competing for national championships.

"You add this ninth in-conference game, and you lose that game when you should’ve won that game, now it knocks you out of the seeding for the playoffs––does that hurt your conference or help your conference? To me, it ultimately hurts your conference by adding a ninth in-conference game and I think it's really set up to hurt the SEC as a whole. It's not something I would add or do."

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