LSU's Brian Kelly Confirms SEC, Big Ten Held CFB Scheduling Discussions

LSU head coach Brian Kelly acknowledged there have been preliminary conversations about a scheduling agreement between the Big Ten and SEC.

Kelly said Wednesday at the SEC spring meetings he believes his fellow coaches in the conference are on board with the idea.

"We think one (Big Ten game) would do it for us to add to our schedule,"he told reporters. "We want to compete against the Big Ten. Look, the Big Ten right now holds it on the SEC. They've won the last two national championships. OK, that's the reality of it. We want to get challenged in that regard, and we'd like to be able to get that done. That is up to our commissioner and the ADs to see if that can happen or not. But that's the wish of the room."

USA Today's Matt Hayes reported back in October the Big Ten and SEC were weighing an annual series like the inter-conference battles dotted across the college basketball schedule.

With major college sports getting increasingly consolidated between the Big Ten and SEC, this proposal is probably inevitable, but it's not yet imminent. ESPN's Heather Dinich cited a source within the SEC who said the idea is "dead in the water" as far as the commissioners are concerned.

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer also seems to have some reservations. He told CBS Sports' John Talty he wants to preserve the Gamecocks' annual rivalry with Clemson. Including that with a nine-game SEC schedule leaves just two open slots for South Carolina, and then you'd be throwing in a Big Ten partnership in there too.

Given how much the college football landscape has changed within the last five years, it's anybody's guess as to what the regular season will look like in another five years.

Conference commissioners don't like leaving money on the table, so the odds look pretty good of the Big Ten and SEC working out the specifics to make an alliance feasible.