Seth Emerson raises an issue that might snap into focus later in the season. The road to the SEC championship hasn’t just changed; it’s not even possible to define. In the past the goal was easy to define: win the division. A team played everyone else in its division, so each team had a considerable amount of control in its place in the divisional standings. With a fairly straightforward road through the SEC East over the past few years, Georgia’s seasons could be framed almost from the outset as preparation for the eventual postseason challenges. But divisions are gone, and that has implications for how each team must navigate the regular season. Now the SEC championship game will match the two teams out of 16 with the best conference records. Each of those 16 teams will have a unique set of eight SEC opponents. That eight-game SEC schedule ensures each team will only see a little over half of the rest of the conference.

As Emerson notes, that structure opens the door for some chaos in everything from determining the title game participants to which SEC teams might get a playoff invitation. Enough has been said about Georgia’s difficult schedule, but there’s enough variance in who-plays-whom for a number of teams to envision a path to Atlanta if there aren’t a pair of 8-0 juggernauts sitting atop the standings. The tidy seven-team round-robin division schedule often provided enough head-to-head tiebreakers to sort things out on each side of the conference, but there will be fewer head-to-head matchups in a larger pool of 16 teams. Emerson illustrates how murky things could get. “You may notice that neither LSU nor Missouri has to play Georgia or Texas. In fact, a number of the projected top teams don’t play each other. Alabama and Texas don’t play. Neither do Ole Miss and Texas or Alabama and Ole Miss.” Georgia will have no question about the postseason if the Bulldogs survive their difficult schedule with an 8-0 conference record. But at 7-1?

The nervous-laughter part of this is that the actual tiebreaker structure is still largely a work in progress. It’s reasonable that head-to-head will remain atop the list, but we’ll have fewer of those scenarios. After that? The season might get underway with that question unanswered. And while the eventual system will have its critics and backers, it’s not a great idea to start playing without knowing the rules. If nothing else, dragging it out opens the door to gripes about favoring certain outcomes.

UPDATE: We have a tiebreaker format! The SEC announced the procedures on August 21st. Nothing too controversial if you’ve ever paid attention to a tiebreaking process for one of the SEC’s other sports like basketball. Key point: it’s a big advantage (as it should be) to knock off a team high in the standings. It’s also interesting that scoring margin will matter if things get too far into the weeds.

One other angle Emerson raises: the CFP doesn’t care how the SEC breaks its ties. The SEC runner-up isn’t guaranteed a spot in the playoff and might not even be the second or third-best team in the league in the eyes of the playoff committee and its metrics. Just because the mechanics of a tiebreaker place a certain team atop a group with identical records, the committee doesn’t have to accept that ordering. In that event, an additional loss in the title game might push the SEC runner-up out of the playoff if it entered the postseason tied with one or two other teams.

But college football has never produced that kind of chaos before, right?

Another postseason change that won’t matter until it does: we know the first round of the CFP will be hosted by teams seeded 5-8. What I haven’t seen though is much discussion of the details. For the teams, it’s enough to say it’s a home game in their own stadiums. How about for the fans? Will each school decide its own ticketing policy? Would a school like Georgia ticket the event like another home game with season ticket holders having first shot at “their” seats? Would there be a full student section? Or would the CFP have some say in a share of tickets for visiting fans, its sponsors, or even the general public? I’m sure I’m overthinking things here, but it would be quite a shock for a fan excited about attending a home CFP game to be thrown back into the priority system used for any other postseason game. Again – it would be nice to have clarity and know the rules before we get to that point.