During an era in college football when conferences increasingly try to impose scheduling mandates on their teams and look to schedule specific games outside the conference, the SEC is operating against and with the trend. For now, they'll resume their eight-game conference schedule (six in division, two outside division and rivalry games included), but by 2016 will require teams to play at least one non-conference game with a fellow power conference school, ESPN reported.

The shift in 2016 is intended to increase the conference's collective strength of schedule (as if the vaunted SEC needed any more help).

"This has been a thoughtful and deliberative process that has resulted in maintaining the current format and adds a provision that will bolster our collective annual non-conference schedule," commissioner Mike Slive said in a statement. "Critical to maintaining this format is the non-conference opponent factor which gives us the added strength-of-schedule we were seeking while allowing continued scheduling flexibility for institutional preferences, and acknowledges that many of our institutions already play these opponents."

Most schools already play a big time non-conference opponent (Alabama, for example, played Virginia Tech last year; Auburn faced Washington State); thus, the new rule isn't a tremendous shift. LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva, however, was upset that the committee didn't decide to alternate rivalry games.

"I'm disappointed in the fact that the leadership of our conference doesn't understand the competitive advantage permanent partners give to certain institutions," Alleva told the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Sunday. "I tried to bring that up very strongly at the meeting today. In our league we share the money and expenses equally but we don't share our opponents equally.

"Since 2000 LSU has played Florida and Georgia 19 times and Alabama has played them eight times. That is a competitive disadvantage. There are a lot of other examples."