We play plenty of tough road games, though I’m not sure what the Mason Dixon line has to do with anything. Regardless, we’re going to Tempe next year to play ASU, does that count? What about Colorado, Oklahoma State or Oregon? That tickle your fancy? I’m not sure why you think we’re scared, if you look a our record vs. your precious Big 10 over the past 20 years. I’m sure you watched the last time your team played UGA.
Besides, it has been impossible for us to maintain a 6-game home schedule and play an additional home-and-home OOC opponent. We play GT every year, and have a neutral site game. Thus, the new 12 game schedule has been the first time since the 2 additional teams were added to the SEC that we’ve been able to add a new home-and-home while maintaining a 6-game home schedule. Of course, I guess we could drop Gt or the Jacksonville game, but we tend to think those traditions are more important than what some anonymous message board user thinks of the geographical orientation of our away games.
OSU & UM won’t even discuss it, so we’re certainly not the ones who are scared.
When was the last time a SEC team played a non-conference away game against the 2nd ranked team in the nation in the regular season? You can rip a lot of teams for not scheduling tough OOC opponents, but not OSU. Sure, we have our share of patsies, but we have been scheduling top powers. We played a 7th ranked WaSu team 5 years back, a home/away with Texas, and we have home/aways scheduled with Miami and USC.
Anyways, I’d be happy with a plus one and going back to conference based bowls. My rule would be that you have to win your conference and win your bowl game to get in the plus one. I’d have:
Rose: Pac 10 vs Big 10
Orange: Acc vs Big East
Sugar: Big 12 vs SEC
Fiesta: At large. A requirement to take any undefeated Division 1A team.
In almost ever year you’d have three teams to choose from. Sure, one team still might arguably be snubbed, but at least that’s only one team vs. the 6 or 7 that have an argument this year. Last year we would have had:
Rose: USC vs. Ohio State
Orange: Louisville vs. Wake Forest
Sugar: Florida vs. Oklahoma
Fiesta: Boise State vs. (LSU, Notre Dame, or Michigan)
Worst case scenario: OSU, Louisville, Florida, and Boise win. OSU plays either Boise or Florida, and the other gets snubbed.
Best case scenario: Boise State loses, and the winners of the Rose and Sugar play.
Well if you want to talk future games, Georgia has future games scheduled at Oklahoma State, home-and-home with Arizona state, at Colorado, home-and-home against Louisville, home-and-home with Clemson, home-and-home with Oregon.
All that in addition to the yearly OOC game against Georgia Tech.
I hope to be there to receive our butt-whooping. We had a good time with your fans (Verplank and a bunch of others tailgated with us before the game) in Athens this year. [/name drop]
You’re still proving my point as to the fact that your ideas are dated. Miami playing Notre Dame this year??? Would maybe be buried in the depths of the college scores. They both are terrible.
Nebraska sucks and PSU is simply average.
Miami-FSU the same.
If anything, the current system encourages a tough non-conference schedule because the naysayers always point to that at the end of the year. Those naysayers are also voters in the polls.
WVU has Auburn next fall in Morgantown.
Auburn sucks! you say. Well, they didn’t when we scheduled them a few years back. Unless a team schedules perennial cupcakes (SEC teams I’m looking at you with the fucking Sun Belt conference) you can’t blame the schedule on a team…
Well LSU has “granted permission” for Les Miles to talk to Michigan after the SEC championship game. Maybe I’m reading too much into things but I think that pretty much seals the deal. But I’m guessing LSU knows they are going to lose him, and within two or three days after the game Miles will publicly accept the Michigan job, and LSU will hire their replacement. Both UM and LSU know there is too much at stake in this key part of the recruiting season to have things up in the air.
As for Miles I’m not sure exactly what I think of him. He has had success, but not long term and not with “his” players. And there does seem to be a bit of sleeze in his character. On the other hand, this is an important recruiting time, and I’m not sure there is a much better option who is gonna come. There is a part of me that really likes Brian Kelly though. Hungry, smart and a fresh perspective would be good, but it seems the monied alums are dead set on Miles and I’d have to guess the deal is already done.
Oh, stuff and nonsense. Look every team in the country from a major conference basically does the same thing out of conference: schedules one good team, and then fills up on bad teams. I don’t fault OSU for playing the local MAC teams; it’s good for the state, and it helps them get it right before it counts. I don’t fault Georgia for playing local southern second-tier teams for the same reason. But with respect, Georgia had both OkSt. AND GaTech this year, if memory serves me right. And they schedule GaTech every year, and the YellowJackets aren’t usually cream puff teams.
Plus, and here is the main point, if you are already playing an IN-conference schedule that includes usually at least three top-25 teams, and often four, what is the NEED to schedule out of conference toughies? And, while it’s slowly improving in the Big-10, usually, beyond OSU and UofM, it’s hit or miss as to who will be in the top-25 in a given year. And the Big-10 teams don’t play a whole round robin, so a team can easily miss the main opposition in a season.
When all is said and done, the best indicator of what is truly going on between two conferences is the record over time inter-conference. As has been pointed out, the Big-10 in that matchup can’t even carry the SEC’s jockstrap. :smack:
College football as a game-day experience is one of the best times in sports. Tracking the in’s and out’s of the college football season, however, is a different matter.
Putting this year aside, King Kaufmann of Salon wrote an interesting column a few years ago regarding the problem of following college football as a sport, i.e. outside of rooting interests:
Even this past season–which has featured quite a few upsets in the top 5, let alone the whole top 25–only two different teams have held the #1 BCS spot. Face it, the BCS is just an elaborate game of musical chairs, and I quit playing that particular “sport” when I was 6…
Does that mean he’ll be on the phone with Michigan during the half time of his bowl game? Because that hurts the team when you should be making adjustments. Not that I’m residually bitter.
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