Malzahn: Idea of Auburn in SEC East is 'common sense'

As a member of the SEC West, Auburn remains a competitive program in arguably college football's toughest division with the likes of Alabama, LSU, and Texas A&M all vying for the same piece of the postseason pie.

But Tigers fans, what if Auburn switched places with Missouri? Missouri is after all, geographically west of Auburn.

All its taken for the idea of division realignment to reach Tigers head coach Gus Malzahn was a seemingly harmless geographical observation floated by former Tigers head coach Pat Dye, according to Seth Emerson of SEC Country. Malzahn thought the idea over and clearly, he thinks its worthy of discussion.

"If you look at the way the map is set up, it’s kind of like common sense," Malzahn said. "But there’s a lot more to it than that. There’s a lot of rivalries, a lot of moving parts. You know, that’s probably far away if that ever happens."

Sure, Malzahn did walk his assertion back a little by acknowledging that a lot would have to happen prior to a conference shakeup, but the reality of the situation is, he and Dye are right.

(Photo courtesy: Google Maps)

It's pure fact that Auburn is located farther east than Missouri, but that alone wasn't able to spark any sort of discussion at the SEC spring meetings.

"It’s not an agenda item. It hasn’t been an agenda item," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said, adding when asked about the idea: "I don’t want to hypothesize."

Sankey further clarified his satisfaction with the current state of the conference, referencing the effort put in by leadership in recent years.

"The 2013-14 year, this conference spent a great deal of time at every level of leadership, our presidents and chancellors, our athletics directors, really looking across the landscape of options, from a football scheduling standpoint, and landed where we are currently: Eight conference games, with the expectation of a ninth game played against a colleague conference institution, with the divisional alignment that’s in place. And it’s worked well," Sankey said.