Without Changes to Conference Alignment, Vanderbilt's Biggest Win May Not Happen
It was a warm October night in front of just under 30,000 elated fans when the clock struck 00:00 and the Vanderbilt Commodores handed the number one ranked Alabama Crimson Tide their first loss of the season.
For 40 long and grueling years, the Commodores could not do it, and never in the history of the program had they beaten a top-five team before that night.
Seconds after the score went final, the fans would be on the field, the happiest they have been to see a Vanderbilt win in quite some time, and not long after the goal post would be paraded down Broadway before finding a new home in the Cumberland River.
If it were not for the recent additions of the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners to the Southeastern Conference, prompting a more rapid conference realignment and the end of divisions, we may have seen none of it happen.
"In the SEC’s old format, which had one permanent cross-division opponent," writes Seth Emerson in a recent article for The Athletic, "some matchups would only occur twice every 12 years."
Vandy called the SEC East home while the Crimson Tide resided in the SEC West in the old format, and they were not a yearly cross-division matchup.
The ending of divisions has seen the beginning of a newfound excitement in the college football landscape.
No longer do we see the same teams face off against each other every single year; we now can witness conference chaos on a weekly basis.
And with that chaos comes new possibilities that no one would ever have thought possible before this year, with the added help of the expanded College Football Playoffs.
Thanks to the Commodores upsetting Alabama, who beat the Georgia Bulldogs the week prior, we now sit in a place where there is a small chance that the Bulldogs could finish the season as the number one ranked team in the nation, but not be a part of the SEC Championship game, should the LSU Tigers, the Texas A&M Aggies, and the Bulldogs all win out.
Georgia would be sitting at home, as LSU would own the tie-breaker because in this hypothetical they win next week's contest against the Crimson Tide, making the Bulldogs the fifth seed in the College Football Playoffs and not giving them a bye week.
This is the kind of excitement that was absent from the college football landscape for many years, and it has brought with it an increase in popularity for the sport, and an ever more present feeling of anticipation for what can happen next.
And to think, none of this would have been possible if the SEC had not changed their old divisional ways.
