How about the Split Pod / 8 Year Rotating Divisions option? Has this been thrown out yet?
It seemed like most other models have trouble balancing playing rivals every year while getting enough variety into the schedule. And then the “no divisions” or options where everyone plays wildly different schedules are too convoluted to pick top teams for a championship game. What if we pushed two pod rivals over to the other division? However, in this scenario no Thanksgiving week rivals can end up immediately paired again in the championship game as that rival is the only team permanently sharing a division.
In the example, Texas every year is paired with A&M (within Division), and meet up against the rest of their pod (Oklahoma and Arkansas) but those two teams are never in Texas’ division. You then play the 6 other teams in your division, which is cycling through all combinations of the 8 pairs of teams. There will be years where the divisions will be a little unbalanced (BA+CB), but I think the 6 other pods are even enough difficulty.
You play every other team 4 times in 8 years, with some unevenness in the regularity. The only 4-on/4-off pod pairing is Pod A/Pod D I think it’s a fine model if Texas/OU don’t play Florida/Georgia for 4 years. The only big sacrifice is the Georgia/Auburn game which sounds like it may be a deal breaker. This game moves to every other year in this scenario.