Texas HC Steve Sarkisian discussed a multitude of different topics in his weekly teleconference, and one of the most interesting subjects was the current SEC scheduling system. He didn't seem to be a fan of how the conference generates the football schedules.
A member of the media mentioned that Texas has two more SEC rival games after the Georgia matchup. Sark was then asked if he's comfortable with how the schedule is currently structured, or if he'd want to have a bye week later in the season like other SEC teams.
Sarkisian responded with:
"I am not comfortable. I don't think there's enough continuity from a scheduling standpoint in the SEC. I understand with us being new to the conference and how schedules get set earlier, years in advance. I think there's some distinct advantages that some people have where they spread out their non-conference games throughout the season, they play non-conference games in the second-to-last game of the season and we're playing all ours on the front end.
They're playing conference games earlier in the year when their team is 100% healthy. I don't love our schedule, but it's our schedule. So I do love it in the same breath because it is what it is. You play the schedule. You play the hand your dealt.
But I just don't think there's a lot of parody from a scheduling standpoint of who's getting non-conference games when and who's getting what level of non-conference opponents because of the impact that it has down the road when you start talking about the playoffs."
Honestly, it's very easy to agree with Sarkisian's answer. It would be nice, though understandably pretty hard, to be able to "reset" schedules whenever a new team is added to a conference in order to increase overall fairness for the new team. Maybe the NCAA could even implement a new rule that non-conference opponents have to be spread out throughout the year, rather than having all 3 to 4 games in the beginning.
It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to implement a new rule stating that teams can only schedule two non-conference opponents before week 7 or something like that. That way, teams would be able to have a bye week + non-conference game during the second half of the season.