SB Nation on tonight's NFL Draft . . . and more

I LOVE the promotion/relegation idea. It just makes things so much more interesting. Allows you to play every team in the conference, and makes the end of the season relevant for teams who are doing poorly. If you’re 3-7 with remaining matchups against Vandy and Kentucky (like we were in 2008), you really need to win those last two to stay out of the relegation zone.

Also, I like how it opens up 5-6 non-conference games, with a real opportunity for some marquee matchups. If I were scheduling things in that setup, I’d schedule about three really, really tough games to open the season and then 1-2 somewhat easier ones to give the team a little bit of a break before conference play starts. In UT’s case, for instance, it’d be awesome to see a schedule like this:

week one: Virginia Tech
week two: Florida
week three: Alabama
week four: Vanderbilt
week five: UAB
weeks six through twelve: conference games (UK, USC, Clemson, UGA, UNC, GT, MTSU).

Also, with the current state of the college football landscape, I think we could threaten to win that conference.

The only downside I see is that when traditional rivalries become non-conference games, I’d expect them to no longer fall on their traditional dates. The whole setup would be so much fun though!