NCAA Football, 2014-2015

[Berkut]

And Oregon having to play Stanford, UCLA, and USC is not? The numbers say that in fact it is just as formidable.

And more importantly, Oregon does not get to replace a game against Stanford or Washington or Arizona State with a game against Southeast Mississippi State School of Mines.

What numbers are you talking about?

Sagarin ratings and conference strength ratings.

If we are talking about the challenge of qualifying for a national title game, the you are talking about the odds of achieving perfection or close to it. That is very different than the odds of getting into a bowl game.

I would think that for a national title contender, replacing Washington And Arizona State with Alabama and the Southeast Mississippi State School of Mines would be a bad trade (from the perspective of ease of running the table). 

More cherry picking. How about replacing Missouri and FCS Chumpstate with Oregon and Stanford?

The numbers speak for themselves. Overall, the SEC is not significantly better than the Pac12. Replacing a Pac12 caliber team with a FCS team results in a vastly weaker strength of schedule. This is stupidly obvious. The only way it would not be true is if the SEC was so radically superior to the Pac12 that it balances out the 9 Pac12 games. But if that was actually true, the SOS ratings would show that...but they don't.

They show just the opposite. As I've said about 30 times now.

We can believe your "gut feeling" that the Pac12 just really isn't very good, or we can believe actual results and objective analysis.

[Berkut]

If all college football was run like the Pac12 and Big10, it would be a greatly improved product. If it was all run like the SEC, I would quit watching.

They are all run the exact same way. It's all about $$$ with a bit of college politics and PR posturing.

Except that they are rather obviously not all run the same way, or everyone would have the same number of conference and non-conference games.

QED.

[alfred russel]

If all college football was run like the Pac12 and Big10, it would be a greatly improved product. If it was all run like the SEC, I would quit watching.

They are all run the exact same way. It's all about $$$ with a bit of college politics and PR posturing.

Except that they are rather obviously not all run the same way, or everyone would have the same number of conference and non-conference games.

QED.

They have different fan bases with different markets which pushes them to schedule differently.

As an example, Miami in the 1980s was winning national titles and still scheduling series games against opponents without a return date. Was that because the athletic department brashly thought it was the best in the country and wanted to just play really good teams and would go anywhere anytime to do it? That is the way it was portrayed, but at the time Miami was drawing 20k a game to non marquee games, so maybe taking a payout to play at Michigan had more to do with dollar and cents after all.

[alfred russel]

More cherry picking. How about replacing Missouri and FCS Chumpstate with Oregon and Stanford?

It isn't cherry picking, it is the illustration of a principle. That is, if you want to run the table, a big roadblock can be more challenging than a bunch of smaller ones. A lot of strength of schedule systems use some variation of opponents records, and opponent's opponent's record, to come up with values. In that case, a Washington / Arizona State pair of games will probably rate higher than Alabama / Eastern Michigan, even though the biggest risk to running the table is the latter pairing.

It also depends on what the strength of schedule is designed to show. If you just want to get into a bowl game (say you are Western Kentucky), the Washington / Arizona State pairing is probably more menacing.

[Valmy]

Man I cannot believe a Canes fan is a shrill for the SEC.  After the Gators were too chickenshit to play Miami once they got good I figured you had lost all respect for them.  Just another famous example of the SEC being too scared to play real competition.  Except LSU they play everybody.

[alfred russel]

Man I cannot believe a Canes fan is a shrill for the SEC.  After the Gators were too chickenshit to play Miami once they got good I figured you had lost all respect for them.  Just another famous example of the SEC being too scared to play real competition.  Except LSU they play everybody.

I'm not a shill for the SEC. But if you can't give them credit for being the best conference when the win 7 of 8 national titles, what is the point of playing the game?

I'm definitely not a fan of the Gators. They like to think they are the premier team in the state, but are 1-7 against Miami in the last 8 and only have 3 national titles.

[Berkut]

Man I cannot believe a Canes fan is a shrill for the SEC.  After the Gators were too chickenshit to play Miami once they got good I figured you had lost all respect for them.  Just another famous example of the SEC being too scared to play real competition.  Except LSU they play everybody.

I'm not a shill for the SEC.

Oh yes you are.

But if you can't give them credit for being the best conference when the win 7 of 8 national titles, what is the point of playing the game?

What drugs are you on?

Where in this thread has anyone ever claimed that the SEC is NOT the best conference?

[Berkut]

They are all run the exact same way.

They have different fan bases with different markets which pushes them to schedule differently.

Your second statement disproves your first. You are wrong. Again.

[alfred russel]

What drugs are you on?

Where in this thread has anyone ever claimed that the SEC is NOT the best conference?

No one has claimed it directly, but the whole point of contention is whether an 8 game SEC schedule can be as challenging as a 9 game schedule in another conference. With unbalanced divisions and 1 fixed game against the other side, it seems unlikely that at least 1 team doesn't have an equal challenge in the SEC if they really are the best conference.

[Ed Anger]

I don't care for the SEC. Except Gene Stallings's 'Bama.

[alfred russel]

They are all run the exact same way.

They have different fan bases with different markets which pushes them to schedule differently.

Your second statement disproves your first. You are wrong. Again.

My first statement is saying they are all chasing money. My second statement is pointing out that chasing money can prompt different decisions. At some schools in the country, you can get monster attendance scheduling a FCS school and there won't be much collateral damage to your TV contract. At some schools, that isn't the case.

[alfred russel]

What really confuses me is why Berkut is raging on scheduling when his own team has the following schedule:

UNLV
UTSA
Nevada

[Berkut]

My own team will have the SOS it deserves. And I am not particularly worried about our shot at a BCS bowl this year, much less the playoffs.

Such is the life of a non-bandwagon fan. You should try it sometime.

You are still bitter about '94, aren't you?

[alfred russel]

My own team will have the SOS it deserves. And I am not particularly worried about our shot at a BCS bowl this year, much less the playoffs.

Such is the life of a non-bandwagon fan. You should try it sometime.

You are still bitter about '94, aren't you?

The world has moved on since 94 berkut. A lot of the current student section for Miami and Arizona were born after that game was played, and if you had been paying attention to the last decade, Miami doesn't really have a bandwagon anymore.

[Valmy]

What really confuses me is why Berkut is raging on scheduling when his own team has the following schedule:

UNLV
UTSA
Nevada

To Arizona those are tough games.