You see ESPN running that 2026 schedule breakdown and talking about our tough stretches and I just have to laugh at how much this league has changed. Back in the 1992 season when we joined the SEC we knew exactly who we were playing every single year. Tennessee, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State. Those were the games that mattered. Now we got Oklahoma and Texas and Missouri and Texas A&M and I cannot keep track of who is coming to Bryant-Denny and who we have to travel to see. The conference realignment destroyed everything that made Saturdays specil.
The SEC Now crew can sit there and break down our schedule all they want but they do not understand what it meant to prepare for the same three or four rivals year after year. You built your entire season around those games. The players knew what was coming. The coaches had years of film. Now it is just a rotating mess of teams we barely have history with. I miss the days when you circled the Tennessee game in August and that was the one that defined your season. Now every week is some new opponent we never asked to play. The sport got bigger but it lost its soul somewhere along the way.