Here is my reasoning, 2 P4 teams reaching the playoff, both with 9-3 records. both finish 6-3 in conference, one has 3 wins agains 2 P4 teams and a Mac team, the other has 3 wins against 2 Mac teams and conference USA team. Who gets left out of playoffs because they are short on quality wins, whatever those are. Too many fans are feeling UK 10 years ago when getting to 4 wins was a struggle, UK isn't that team any longer, now the task is getting to the playoffs.
This doesn't benefit UK playing UL, I don't get where that comes. How is beating your instate rival like a drum not benificial to UK?. Clemson owns South Carolina, but South Carolina nor Clemson want to end the series. SC almost went against SEC wishes and played them anyway in the covid year. Same can be said with the FSU and UF series.
I just feel its going to come out of Birmingham soon that we, SEC schools are going to be limited to the number of Group teams we can play. Why should teams playing 10 P4 teams not get a bigger cut of the TV money that a team playing 9? UF is playing 11 P4 teams this year. I have seen it posted more than once here that the fans would like to see UK play in one of the Kickoff games, put your name in the hat, UK has a brand now, fans travel very well, one of them would be glad to have UK, but don't expect to line up against Akron.