GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- In a conference full of traditional rivalries, the annual LSU-Florida game stands among the SEC's most high-profile contests.
The two head coaches have very different opinions on the league's recent vote to continue the eight-game format that features one permanent cross-division foe.
LSU coach Les Miles on Wednesday called the system "flawed," while Florida's Will Muschamp agrees the schedule isn't fair but said "it's fine with me."
"There's no perfect answer to please everybody," Muschamp said during the SEC's spring coaches teleconference. "We did that was best for our league. We all have a hidden agenda [for] whatever university we represent."
SEC athletic directors voted 10-4 on Sunday in favor of keeping the schedule format, and LSU AD Joe Alleva immediately expressed his disappointment in the decision.
Miles echoed those sentiments on Wednesday.
"The scheduling did not go like I thought it should," he said. "I felt like the most important thing that an athletic conference can do is pick a champion in a straightforward, fair [way] and remove obstacles to any one or all teams. … The rotation of opponents can only be the fair and right way. It gives everybody an opportunity to see the entire schedule, the entire conference in four years. It removes annual inequity of scheduling.
"To say that this is the fairest and rightest way to pick a champion, I think that is flawed."
Muschamp, who coached at LSU from 2001-2004, agreed but didn't offer the same kind of resistance as Miles.
"It isn't all fair all the time and that's part of it," Muschamp said. "When you're in a league and you've got 14 universities being represented, that's what commissioner [Mike] Slive does. He and his staff make a decision on what's best for the majority of the conference and whatever format they went with, eight games, I was going to be good with.
"We've got a great rivalry -- and I've been on both sides of it -- with Florida and LSU. It's an exciting game. It's a national game, certainly a game that I know Les enjoys and I do as well."
Florida and LSU have played every year since 1971 and first met in 1937. The teams have played 60 times, with the Gators holding a 31-26-3 edge.