SEC writer complaining about 'strength of schedule'

[spinseeker]

Saying it's not a big enough factor. Like the SEC should get a bump for it instead of a knock against their BCS standings.

http://www.govolsxtra.com/news/2009/may ... artner=RSS

I couldn't believe I was reading this. At least it is from a Tennessee writer, since Tennessee is the only SEC team to have never played against an FCS team. (Just as UCLA and Washington have not and are among only a handful of FBS teams to be able to make that claim.)

It's funny when you go through the schedules at the end of the year (before bowl games), like I did last year. I looked at the SEC and the ACC. If you take out the wins over FCS teams, a lot of the teams that are at or just above .500 would no longer be 'winning record teams'. Then the teams that are around 8-10 wins only have maybe one win against a team with a legitimate winning record.

I think their is like five teams this year with TWO games against FCS teams as part of their OOC. two of those teams are from the Big 12 if I remember correctly.

[wheaton4prez]

SEC fans tend to be nuts. Not all of them. But, they've parroted the "premiere league" mantra so many times that it's brainwashed a quarter of the nations football fans.

As you can see here: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbc08.htm

Strength of schedule in the SEC is pretty much the same as everyone else.

[spinseeker]

Boy, without Washington and Washington State dragging us down last year, we would have been right behind the SEC.

[wheaton4prez]

Boy, without Washington and Washington State dragging us down last year, we would have been right behind the SEC.

Actually, for strength of schedule, I think we do average higher than the SEC even with UW and WSU. In fact, Washington brings our conference schedule up since they had the toughest schedule in the country last year.

Are you looking at the conference rankings? That's different than the strength of schedule rankings. That's ranking how tough the conference is without considering what opponents they choose to play over the season.

...

Average strength of schedules per conference:

Pac-10: 74.691
SEC: 74.475

The Pac-10, as a conference, including "difficulty of conference games", had slightly better strength of schedule (assuming that tougher games is better) than the SEC.

[spinseeker]

I was looking at the 'central mean' and the 'simple average' and how UW and WSU brought our 'conference ranking' scores down. I scrolled down to the conference breakdowns of each team.

This isn't a strength of schedule list, but a conference strength list. Not sure how they figure it, but with the ACC as the second ranked conference something is screwed up.