Bret Bielema took a break from his offseason fishing expeditions to chat with the media down in Destin, Florida, on Tuesday. While doing so, he once again brought up the idea of making an SEC-Big Ten or SEC-ACC Challenge happen in football.
There are obviously road blocks to making a yearly cross-conference competition like the one that occurs in basketball between the ACC and Big Ten. Primarily, football schedules are decided well into the future with many teams already having out-of-conference games scheduled 10 years in advance.
However, the idea is certainly an interesting one. If you were able to get each team from the two conferences keep the same week open on the schedule for a "challenge" game, you could create a really great conference rivalry. SEC and Big Ten fans already love to chirp at each other, so to settle some things on the field would be even better, and there's the obvious rivalry by proximity between the SEC and ACC.
If structured in the same way as the ACC-Big Ten Challenge in basketball, the 14 teams in each conference would match up based on where they finished in the conference the year before. That would create some terrific matchups at the top of the challenge and some more cringe-worthy games at the bottom.
Taking the 2015 conference standings, this is what the 2016 SEC-Big Ten Challenge would look like:
Alabama vs. Michigan State
Florida vs. Iowa
Ole Miss vs. Ohio State
Tennessee vs. Michigan
Georgia vs. Northwestern
Arkansas vs. Wisconsin
LSU vs. Penn State
Texas A&M vs. Nebraska
Mississippi State vs. Minnesota
Auburn vs. Indiana
Vanderbilt vs. Illinois
Kentucky vs. Maryland
Missouri vs. Rutgers
South Carolina vs. Purdue
Alabama against Michigan State we saw last year in the College Football Playoff semifinal, and it didn't go particularly well for the Spartans. However, Florida against Iowa is an interesting defensive matchup, Ole Miss against Ohio State sounds like a whole lot of fun, and Tennessee against Michigan has a lot of potential.
The middle portion of the challenge features some pretty mediocre games but we would get the Bielema Bowl between Arkansas and Wisconsin and an old Big 12 matchup between Texas A&M and Nebraska. The bottom four games would make for downright hideous football, but I would love them all like my children.
With the ACC, it would look like this:
Alabama vs. Clemson
Florida vs. North Carolina
Ole Miss vs. Florida State
Tennessee vs. Pittsburgh
Georgia vs. Miami
Arkansas vs. Louisville
LSU vs. Duke
Texas A&M vs. Virginia Tech
Mississippi State vs. NC State
Auburn vs. Virginia
Vanderbilt vs. Syracuse
Kentucky vs. Wake Forest
Missouri vs. Georgia Tech
South Carolina vs. Boston College
I'm all in on this right now. Alabama-Clemson rematch? Yes, please. Florida against North Carolina could be fun, I guess, but Ole Miss-Florida State sounds like a great time and we'd get the Richt Bowl with Miami and Georgia, and the main event in my humble opinion is the Petrino Bowl with Arkansas and Louisville. Put that game in Fayetteville and just watch the hate flow out of the Razorback faithful.
At the bottom, we still have a lot of sadness just like with the SEC-Big Ten Challenge. South Carolina-Boston College might produce 150 total offensive yards and 10 total points on a good day. What I'm saying is, sign me up.
As for SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, he's not too keen on the idea of making Bielema's dream a reality.
Greg Sankey on Bielema's SEC vs. Big Ten challenge idea: "We generally call those bowl games." So that would be a no.
— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomonCBS) May 31, 2016
Keep on pushing for this, Bielema, and maybe one day we can live this dream together.
