For the longest that I can remember, the whole, entire NCAA has followed the Big Ten model of scheduling for men's basketball (all non-conference play to the start the season and then nothing but conference play to end it), and for some conferences and teams, that may work just fine. But in the SEC as well as the ACC, it isn't working. What I propose is that the SEC and the ACC allow teams to play non-conference games whenever they want, so long as they give up earlier dates for conference games.

For example, UGa, GT, UK, and UL would all play a conference game early in the year, and then on rivalry weekend, they could play each other (UGA-GT, UK-UL). Those teams will still want to end their season with a conference game will be allowed to do so also. Basically, the basketball schedule would resemble the football schedule more. (Rivals played later rather than earlier). UGA-GT is huge in basketball, and while UGa-GT is slowly heating up some in football, it is already there in basketball. Why not just go ahead and make it official?