DESTIN, Fla. — LSU coach Brian Kelly is ready to welcome the Big Ten to Death Valley.
The SEC and Big Ten have discussed some forms of a scheduling agreement that would increase the frequency with which teams from those two super conferences meet in the regular season.
However, nothing is imminent between the two leagues. First, a new College Football Playoff format must be put in place, and then the SEC has to get its own house in order and figure out how many league games it wants to play.
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But more SEC versus Big Ten is definitely on the list of long-term goals. Kelly said Wednesday that it came up during this week’s SEC meetings and the coaches seem receptive.
Maybe none more than Kelly.
“Our first goal would be wanting to play Big Ten teams as coaches. And I can speak for the room. We want to play Big Ten schools. We’ve got to get a partner. You got to get a partner who says we’re in for that, too,” he said after SEC coaches wrapped up their portion of this week’s conference meetings.
LSU played new Big Ten members USC in Las Vegas and UCLA in Baton Rouge, La., last year. Both were scheduled when the Los Angeles schools were in the Pac-12.
The UCLA game marked the first time a Big Ten school visited Death Valley since Ohio State in 1987.
Kelly is also a proponent of playing nine SEC games.
“We think one (Big Ten game) would do it for us to add to our schedule,” Kelly said. “We want to compete against the Big Ten. Look, the Big Ten right now holds it on the SEC. They’ve won the last two national championships. OK, that’s the reality of it. We want to get challenged in that regard, and we’d like to be able to get that done. That is up to our commissioner and the ADs to see if that can happen or not. But that’s the wish of the room.”
Not everybody has the same wish as Kelly, though.
South Carolina coach Shane Beamer already has an annual nonconference game against one of the country’s best programs in in-state rival Clemson.
“I’d be all for it. But again, what does the other teams in our league, what does their nonconference look like, as well? I’m worried about South Carolina, but Texas, you play a Big Ten team. Great. That’s nine SEC games, a Big Ten team, and then you have two (more),” he said. “If you wanted to go schedule two FCS teams, you could. Ours is different, because we’re saying nine plus Clemson plus a Big Ten alliance. … I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense, but just looking at it from our standpoint.”
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Beamer has no desire to mess with the Palmetto Bowl.
“I think it’s ironclad,” he said. “Now, there’s people above me to make those decisions, but I would never want that game to go away. Rivalries and rivalry weekend is what makes this sport great. I know what it means. We’re in a state in South Carolina, there’s no pro sports. That game is a big deal.”
Arkansas coach Sam Pittman also said he was up for playing a Big Ten team every year, but with a little different spin: Keep the current eight-game conference schedule and add a Big Ten game on top of that.
“It’s just like if we go to nine games in the SEC. OK, that’s fine, we also just added eight more losses on our record,” Pittman said. “You wouldn’t get that necessarily, where you just automatically have eight other losses, if you went the other way and just played the Big Ten.”
Kelly said the No. 1 priority for SEC coaches is positioning the conference to maximize the number of teams it can put in the CFP. He hopes the selection process can evolve past the point where the most important thing is the number of losses a team has.
“I think we have to look at our schedule and have faith in the process that we are going to get to a better place as we continue to work through the selection process,” he said.
(Photo: Denny Medley / USA Today via Imagine Images)
