The hot topic in Southeastern Conference football right now is expansion. There is some fact - Texas A&M is coming to the SEC - and a great deal of speculation, all centered on the question of what the ultimate effect will be.
No one knows. But it is now possible to look back to the last SEC expansion - the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina in 1991, and their football eligibility beginning in 1992 - and recognize one unintended but welcome effect.
It created, unwittingly, in a way, the SEC's most significant rivalry of the past 20 years. Perhaps not the most frequently-played, or the bitterest, but the one that most often paired teams of national-championship quality, the one that has played for higher combined stakes than any other in the past two decades.
Alabama vs. Florida.
It was expansion that created two divisions. Two divisions allowed the SEC championship game.
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