Templeton's job: Address football scheduling issues in SEC

DESTIN, Fla. - If Larry Templeton thought he had his hands full running an athletic department when he was Mississippi State's athletic director for two decades, then he never tried making 12 SEC athletic directors and their head football coaches simultaneously happy.

Templeton, in his role as an advisor to SEC commissioner Mike Slive, has the current charge of helping the league compose its future football schedules for a 10-year period starting in 2012.

How did Templeton get the job?

"I have a pencil with a big eraser," he joked at this week's SEC business meetings that end today at the Sandestin Beach Hilton.

Until a couple of months, the league football schedule was primarily in the hands of executive associate commissioner Mark Womack, who has served in the SEC office longer than any current employee. Womack's historical prospective of SEC football and its rivalries made him the ideal person to help program the computer to spit out the conference schedules.

"We're trying to address issues that we've had either pop up or existing from our current schedules,'' Womack said, "such as the number of conference away games in a row, the number of conference games in a row, as well as the open date issue."

The open date sticking point has been a problem the last two of the last three years. In 2008, Tennessee played four SEC games against teams that had open dates the week before they played the Vols, and went 1-3 against those teams (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky)

In the upcoming season, defending national champion Alabama has six games against SEC teams (Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Tennessee) that have open dates the week prior to taking on the Crimson Tide.

Even at this late date, Alabama athletic director Mal Moore is hopeful the SEC can step in and help the Tide reshuffle the schedule to get some relief.

"We've tried every way to make some things work and we still have a chance on one or possibly two, but that will have to happen soon," Moore said. "We're just waiting."

Templeton is listening closely to the athletic directors on some of the things they'd like to see in future conference scheduling. He's already given them a rough draft of schedules that show no SEC team will play more than three conference foes that had open dates before playing that team.

"One of the toughest issues is that the ADs are going to have to decide if the traditional games that are sacred will remain in same places on the schedule as they are now," Templeton said. "The whole motive is to get as much competitive balance for all 12 schools.

"I think what I would tell my fellow ADs after sitting on the other side of the table now is that there are some years you're going to be pleased and some years when you're not going to be pleased. A lot of that is determined by which non-divisional teams rotate on and who rotates off and who you perceive as a strong teams year-to-year."

The league waited until it had its new TV contracts with ESPN and CBS in place before it began planning future football scheduling. Both networks signed a 15-year deal that began last season.

"We've got a lot of television entities to try and meet the needs for our new television packages," Womack said, "so we'll look at all those kinds of things to try and make the schedule as fair and equitable as it can be."

Templeton said getting feedback from the athletic directors on some of the preliminary schedules he has already given them should speed finalizing the schedules.

"The desire is sooner than later (to finish the scheduling), but we're going to get it right," Templeton said. "That's the important thing."